J. Christou was born of Greek parents at Heliopolis, N.E.

of Egypt’s Cairo on 8th January

1926. As a child he was well educated, receiving his primary educaGon at the English Victoria
College in Alexandria. He started having piano lessons in 1931 and for a period of Gme he
studied with the famous contemporary pianist Gina Bachauer, who introduced him to music
theory. J. Christou started composing at an early age. In 1945, he moved to Kings College,
Cambridge in England to study philosophy and formal logic, under Ludwig WiRgenstein and
Bertrand Russell (Minou, 2010) and obtained an MA degree in philosophy in 1948. Simul-
taneously, he also started studying music on a private basis with Hans F. Redlich, who was a
well-known musicologist and had been a student of Alban Berg. He later went to Rome to
study orchestraGon with Angelo F. Lavagnino.

During 1951-1954 J. Christou travelled widely across Europe, ending with a short stay at
Zurich, where it is believed that he met Carl Jung and aRended sev- eral lectures in
psychology with him, although this informaGon is not confirmed by evidence. His brother,
Evanghelos – who himself was a student of C. Jung – had greatly encouraged J. Christou’s
studies in psychology.

J. Christou returned to Alexandria in 1951 where he devoted himself to com- posiGon. In

1956 he married his childhood friend Theresia Horemi, an excepGonal young painter from
Chios. In the same year, his brother was killed at a car acci- dent, a fact that had a deep
effect on J. Christou. Evangelos was considered as his spiritual mentor who had a great role
in his creaGve thinking and his death had a deep effect that sGgmaGsed J. Christou. It is
worth menGoning that Evangh- elos’s book The Logos of the Soul was a posthumous
publicaGon edited and curated by J. Christou himself. In 1960 he moved permanently to
Greece, dividing his Gme between Chios and Athens before eventually seRling in the laRer
due to his increasing professional demands.

J. Christou and his wife Theresia were killed in a car accident aaer celebraGng the
composer’s name day. J. Christou died at the age of forty four on his birthday, being already
one of the leading composers of his Gme. His composiGonal and pre-composiGonal work is
kept in his personal archive in Athens and managed by the composer’s daughter Sandra.
Jani Christou was extremely aware of the history of theatre, civilizaGon, responsorial
psychological reacGons (at least how much he could learn from Jung, which whom he
studied).

Strychnine Lady (1967), a work included in a group of compositions which are

described by the composer himself as stage-rituals and aim to lead the performers and
audience to a transcendent stage in order to com- municate primeval and archetypal elements
of the unconscious. The interdisciplinary nature of the work requires a special analytical
approach.

We will see that Jani Christou is not trying to build a musical form, to create sounds, either
to replicate a ritual of behavioral repeGGon of the players on the stage, as is happening with
the normal concert situaGons. He is more trying to put two different worlds in
contradicGon: the music and the theatre, the dead and the living world, the sacred and the
profane.
So he is using what is called in theatre: "Metapraxis is concerned with breaking through
the meaning barrier of a single medium, whatever that medium may be. Whenever that
happens, that is music. So that music can be in any medium, providing metapraxis can occur.
Music can be silent".

One of the theories about the appariGon of performaGve art (where also music is included),
is that it came from the rituals.

To speak about rituals, we would need to understand the sacral dimension of it in Gme and
space.

M. Eliade
Spatiul sacru- non-homogenous space; it appears and it desapears: the religious celebrations;
tot din spatial sacru face parte obiectul sacru- un obiect care devine altceva, fara a inceta sa
fie el insasi.
Timpul sacru- neomogen; comemorarea unui eveniment mitic; “anul nou- timp neutilizat,
nou, pur”.- repetition, cyclicity

RepeGGon- a mean to get into a trans; the sacralizaGon of space; the mental stage where
you can perceive a ritual. Make a comparison with the pure listening of a sound.
R. Schencher, the repeGGon and the cyclicity that make a performance; the example with
the hunGng.

NON HOMOGENOUS TIME! HOLLOWED TIME!

proto-performance (proto-p): a source or impulse that gives rise to a performance; a

starting point. A performance can (and usually does) have more than one proto-p. (SPEAK
ABOUT EUGENIO BARBA)

1. THE 4 ACTORS
2. ACTRESS IN THE AUDIENCE
3. THE VIOLA SOLOIST
4. THE MUSICIANS- instrumental ensemble (Greek Chorus)
5. Tape
6. Various sound object
7. Red cloth

THE BEGINNING
The relaGonship with the audience
Destroying the meaning of the ritual by creaGng another one
CREATING NOT SOUND BY A CONTEXT
THE 4TH WALL- the differenGaGon in listening
GESTULIN SINE E UN GEST RITUALIC

THE SACRIFICE AND THE PERFORMANCE

Richard Schechner argues in his book “Ritual and Performance” that the start of the Western
'great tradiGon' Queen Clytemnestra murders King Agamemnon (aaer he has sacrificed their
daughter Iphigenia), Agave dismembers her son, Pentheus, and Oedipus kills his father in a
rage and then, decades later, when he discovers whom he has murdered, and who his wife
is, he rips out his own eyes. ChrisGanity is founded on the torture of crucifixion and
propagated by the stories of many martyred saints. Hindu mythology is full of wars and
bloodthirsty demons. Even Buddhism in its Tibetan and Sri Lankan versions includes the
most horrific demons and violent exorcisms. The core drama of shamanism in Asia and the
Americas is a perilous journey climaxing in a life-and-death struggle of the shaman against
powerful adversaries. Shia Muslims re-enact and mourn with extreme and bloody self-
wounding the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

At the Rehearsal marks 9-13, the viola player is required to play just one continuous note.
According to the music score, J. Christou gives the following instructions:

• deeply meditative
• unreal
• soft

During their entrance, the actors recite a LaBn text. This awakens a mysterious spirit, since
there is a bringing of the past into the future, creaGng a strange but sGll interesGng
redefiniGon of Gme- THE SACRED TIME. The broad characterisaBon of LaBn as ‘dead’
creates on its own a weird sense of bringing the world of the ‘dead’ into the living world, a
fact that creates an atmosphere connected with ritual. – connecGon between words (dead
and alive; theatre and music)

The parGcular text used in this small part of the Strychnine Lady presents the story of
Gabricius, as it is described in the ancient alchemical text Rosarium Philosophorum (Jung,
1952). There, Beya embraces Gabricus with such overwhelming love that absorbs him
completely into her womb, transforming him into many invisible pieces. Following this
union, the formerly two different persons are now combined, forming a new creature. C.
Jung states that this bizarre union of Beya and Gabricius is an enGrely symbolic incest of the
conscious that descents into the unconscious (Sakallieros, &Kyriakos, 2008).

0 Parodos
1-2 First Episode
3-8 First Stasimon
9-15 2nd Episode
16-18 2nd Stasimon
19-26 3rd Episode
27-29 3rd Stasimon
30-38 4th Episode
39-42 4th Stasimon
43-79 BIG EXODUS

Structure of the Greek tragedy

The basic structure of a Greek tragedy is fairly simple. After a prologue spoken by
one or more characters, the chorus enters, singing and dancing. Scenes then
alternate between spoken sections (dialogue between characters, and between
characters and chorus) and sung sections (during which the chorus danced). Here
are the basic parts of a Greek Tragedy:

a. Prologue: Spoken by one or two characters before the chorus appears. The
prologue usually gives the mythological background necessary for understanding
the events of the play.

b. Parodos: This is the song sung by the chorus as it first enters the orchestra and
dances.

c. First Episode: This is the first of many "episodes", when the characters and
chorus talk.

d. First Stasimon: At the end of each episode, the other characters usually leave
the stage and the chorus dances and sings a stasimon, or choral ode. The ode
usually reflects on the things said and done in the episodes, and puts it into some
kind of larger mythological framework.

For the rest of the play, there is alternation between episodes and stasima, until the
final scene, called the...

e. Exodos: At the end of play, the chorus exits singing a processional song which
usually offers words of wisdom related to the actions and outcome of the play.

13-16 A NEW RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PIANO- THE ACTORS THAT MUST SING AT IT!

20-25 THE RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHER OBJECTS- THE METAL SHIT; HIDING! THE
SACRALIZATION OF THE BANAL

26- THEATRE TRANSFORMS INTO SOUND

29- THE TAPE- PROTO-PERFORMANCE

30- BREAKING THE 4TH WALL! CREATING EXPECTATIONS, SUPERPOSING IMAGINARY
MATERIALS, ALSO MUSICAL, OVER THE SONIC INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THE STAGE

31-32 THEY CONTINUE THE BREAKING; THE DESACRALIZATION OF ONE SPACE, AND
SACRALIZATION OF THE OTHER. REALITY VS DREAM.
He is breaking the wall in order to define beder the real Bme and space vs the imaginary,
scenic one.

34- FIRST MEETING: BOTH THEATRE AND MUSIC MIME

39- TIME IN MUSIC VS TIME IN TEATRE; LOOK THE INDICATIONS- MUSIC VS

FENOMENOLOGY
The music being amplified, the sound- a real sound is projected through another source;
the philosophy in the amplificaBon vs the real acousBc phenomenon

43- first exact musical informaBon;

44- Se panicheaza cel de pe scena si striga si actrita din sala

46- The music escapes theatre!!!! Metapraxis is concerned with breaking through the
meaning barrier of a single medium, whatever that medium may be. Whenever that happens,
that is music. So that music can be in any medium, providing metapraxis can occur. Music
can be silent".

The Rehearsal marks 76 – a funeral ceremony

The choice of red colour for the cloth is not unintenGonal. Red is considered as a sacred
colour and is linked with many symbols. Red throughout the development of civilisaGon has
had conno- taGons with the sacred. Red is associated, from ancient Gmes, with ceremonies
of human or animal sacrifice and usually represents blood. It is also the colour of fire,
another sacred symbol and is very oaen used in funerals, a fact that enhances the
assumpGon of the “funeral” semblance at the Rehearsal marks 76-78.

The above reference to funeral ceremonies and realisGc events such as a funeral march are
in contrast with the three actors who stand and smoke casually, acGng as if nothing is
happening. Also, there is a fourth actor who is not related at all with all the events and
acGons taking place, he is like a being in a world of his own.

In Rehearsal marks 69, two of the smoking actors go back “leisurely” and pick up a red cloth
that is placed on a metal con- strucGon, whilst the remaining actor keeps smoking
“nonchalantly”, waiGng for them to return. In the meanGme, the horn and trombone player
are sGll walking slowly through auditorium and actor 1 also walks slowly, always gazing “fixe-
dly”. At Rehearsal marks 70, violins 1, 2 & 3 to stand up. The three previously smoking actors
are now covering casually the viola soloist “as though this is a rouGne job”. A second or so
aaer she has been covered, a spotlight comes up on the viola player Actor 2 makes gestures
on the same moGves of the preciously performed Rehearsal marks 31. Subsequently, actor 4
takes a snapshot, using a camera, of the covered viola soloist and the remaining actors.