Pericles.htm

from Guthrie Theater Archive: Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Notes from composer Greg Brosofske

Editor’s Note: This piece has been edited from composer Greg Brosofske’s comments
to Guthrie actors and staff early in the rehearsal process for Pericles.
"In keeping with The Arabian Nights motif, I’ve been listening to a lot of music from the
Middle East, Turkey, Armenia and Egypt to try to create an imaginary realm that maybe
existed sometime in the past, that feels real in some ways but unreal and imaginary in
others. Working with these Mideastern sounds, I thought one of the worst directions I
could go would be to do “our rendition” of world music, because we’re not really
reproducing certain music, we’re extrapolating back into this imaginary past, trying to
create something that may have existed and may have evolved into what we have today.
One thing I noticed as I started working with those sounds, with instruments I had never
even heard before, or heard of before, instruments with really interesting textures, is that
they immediately strike you with their exoticism. That’s great in one way, and their failing
point in another, because we can’t interpret the exotic: that’s maybe what people mean
when they talk about the exotic, that it’s nothing more than “the Other.” So I felt that to get
a good sort of emotional context for Western ears—being a Western composer myself—
I needed to work with other instruments, instruments that have an emotional register for
us, and build things around these sounds. That way we create a mixture of exotic and
familiar in this imaginary realm. So a lot of these pieces incorporate the Turkish kaval, a
flute-like instrument, and the udu, a type of drum. Because wandering is a big element in
this whole play, I felt that I needed at least some pieces that didn’t have beginnings,
middles and ends but were very lyrical and had an overall shape of moving and racing."