Persephone (2001) 57'
Instrumentation:
Clarinet, trumpet, percussion, violin, cello
Premiere:
June 7, 8, and 9, 2002, Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder, CO with Gregory Walker on violin, Anne Brennand on cello, Mary Jungerman on clarinet, Mark Hyams on trumpet, and Thomas Blomster on percussion and danced by students of the Peak Arts Academy.
Awards:
A suite drawn from this ballet, Into the Underworld and Out Again, won the 2002 Murray S. Katz Young Composers' Competition which included a performance of the work by Collage New Music at Paine Hall, Harvard University.
Into the Underworld and Out Again won an honorable mention in the 2002 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers' Competition.
Into the Underworld and Out Again won second place in the 2002 Music Teacher's National Association Young Composers Competition High School Division.
Movements:
1. Happy Beginning
2. Frogs
3. Butterflies
4. Ladybugs Waltz
5. Ducks
6. Happy Before Hades
7. Hades Arrives
8. Hades & Persephone Tango (Listen - 8.66MB .MP3)
9. Pikas
10. Sisyphus
11. Interlude
12. Demeter Grieves (Listen - 5.12MB .MP3)
13. Demeter's Tears (Listen - 5.18MB .MP3)
14. Zeus Comforts Demeter (Listen - 4.64MB .MP3)
15. Zeus Solo
16. Tempting with Pomegranate
17. Zeus & Hades Fight
18. Pomegranate Seeds (Listen - 3.74MB .MP3)
19. Four Seasons & Gods
20. Spring (Listen - 2.96MB .MP3)
21. Summer
22. Fall
23. Winter (Listen - 2.98MB .MP3)
24. Finale (Listen - 6.31MB .MP3)
The ballet narrative of Persephone was a collaboration between Anna Lindemann and Ana Claire, with musical score by Anna Lindemann and choreography by Ana Claire. The ballet relates the story of the Greek goddess Persephone who is abducted by Hades, ruler of the underworld. Overwhelmed by grief at her daughter's absence, Persephone's mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest neglects the plants of the earth and they wither and dies. Zeus, king of the gods, confronts Hades to try and reconcile the situation. Once in the underworld, Zeus discovers that Persephone has eaten six seeds from the pomegranate, which prevents her from leaving the underworld. Despite Persephone's gastronomic gaffe, a compromise is achieved from which our seasons originated; Persephone is to spend six months of every year in the underworld for the six seeds she consumed, and the other half of the year during Spring and Summer she lives above ground with her mother.