Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Adone by Katia Tiutiunnik

Adone is the first of a number of compositions of mine inspired by a "dying and rising god"--a mythological personification of nature's cycle of birth, death and renewal, encountered in myriad forms in ancient religious traditions all over the world. The title "Adone", is the Italian version of "Adonis", the the ancient Greek counterpart of the Sumerian god, Dumuzi (Semitic Tammuz), the most ancient personification of the eternal cycle of life, death, destruction and renewal-- (whose life, death and resurrection and their associated religious rituals have also served as inspiration for over twelve compositions of mine, written subsequent to Adone).

Adonis, like his Sumerian counterpart Dumuzi, is portrayed as a beautiful, innocently self-centred youth who dies and rises again, bringing both destruction and renewal with the turn of the seasons. Adonis' miraculous birth from a myrrh tree, his love affairs with the goddesses Aphrodite and her shadowy counterpart Persephone, his fatal encounter with the boar, followed by his joyful resurrection were all dramatically reenacted in musically rich religious rituals held at crucial points in Nature's cycle. Like Dumuzi, Adonis was adored as the quickener of the child, the force that causes the sap to rise in the tree and a deity of fertility, vegetation and the netherworld.

In Adone, this eternal cycle of life, death and renewal personified in Adonis and his counterparts, is symbolized by the myriad distinctly characterized musical lines (each being played by one or a subgroup of instruments) which unfold simultaneously with the passage of time, only to "die" to their original natures by taking on the the characteristics of other simultaneously unfolding musical lines. This results in the "rebirth" of distinctly new musical structures, thus reflecting the death and rebirth of Adonis and his Near Eastern counterparts. The significant roles given to the percussion and wind instruments of the nonet, alludes to the important roles given to wind and percussion instruments in the ancient religious rituals associated with Adonis, Tammuz, Dumuzi and other "dying and rising gods". The roto-toms in Adone also serve to musically symbolize the inexorable nature of the eternal cycle of life, death and rebirth, to which every living being in the natural world is subjected to.

Adone was composed in 1994, while I was studying at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, Italy, under the tutelage of the late Franco Donatoni.

Donatoni selected Adone to be part of our annual composition department concert, held in the Chiese di S. Maria del Carmine, Milan, Italy, on November 24 1994, as part of the 1994 Festivale Nuove Sincronie.

Katia Tiutiunnik,

Xinzheng, Henan, China,

September 22 2018