Views And Reviews: Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia
Paul Serotsky introduces us to the adagio – a magnificently full-blooded tune - of Khachaturian’s four-act ballet “Spartacus’’.
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Khachaturian(1903-78) – Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia
Aram Khachaturian originally intended to become a biologist, but, as luck would have it, got sidetracked into a musical career. A staunch Armenian, virtually all his music celebrates the Armenian national culture, replete with exotic colours and vibrant, sometimes almost brutal rhythm. His melodic devices are frequently Mugam-derived, often inciting streams of repetition which can, occasionally, seem maddening to many western ears. Khachaturian's music is not intellectual – at least, not in the same sense as Brahms’s – and it can often sound brash to the point of outright luridness, although this is not to say that there’s anything wrong with the musical equivalent of a spectacular fireworks display.
The four-Act ballet “Spartacus” was produced in Leningrad in 1956 (so it's roughly contemporary with “West Side Story”, though there all similarity ends). Huge expanses of its spectacular action are accompanied by propulsive, bruisingly rhythmic, toccata-like passage-work. Thus the Adagio, when it arrives, sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb, as the most memorable – if not quite the only – tune in the entire ballet.
But, what a magnificently full-blooded tune! Even if you think the opening of Bax's “Tintagel” would have been more apt, you can understand the use of this music, with its refulgent, aspiring melodic line, for the seafaring TV saga “The Onedin Line” (dammit – I promised myself I wasn't going to mention that!).
© Paul Serotsky 1999, 2006
