The Sultan Shahriar, convinced of the duplicity and infidelity of all women, vowed to slay each of his wives after the first night. The Sultana Scheherazade, however, saved her life by the expedient of recounting to the Sultan a succession of tales over a period of one thousand one nights. Overcome by curiosity, the monarch postponed the execution of his wife from day to day, and ended by renouncing his sanguinary resolution altogether. (Rimsky’s Korsakov’s Preface to the score)
The sultan’s do-my-bidding swagger in the opening trombones, ominous footsteps from a whole-tone scale. The delicate, solo violin of Scheherazade. Marked espressivo, accompanied by a harp. In Keller’s painting, Scheherazade placed slightly higher than the sultan. Scheherazade and her stories illuminated, too, with a brighter light. (The light of knowledge, spirituality, beauty, morality.) All around them exotic ornaments of color. Peacock, parrot, arabesque covered Islamic vase. The snake ankle bracelet Scheherazade wears not unlike the clarinet’s snake charmer seeming improvisatory scales of rapid kisses seducing everyone who listens. Rimsky-Korsakov’s music a late 19th-century Russian orientalizing exoticizing kaleidoscope of orchestral, originary magic. The ornamented bassoon solo for the Kalendar prince accompanied by a soft, muted choir of horns. The delicate triple tonguing in the trumpets as an accompaniment to dancing octaves in the flutes and oboes. Snare drum, triangle, tambourine, tam-tam. The waves beneath Sinbad’s ship as they grow in intensity, every instrument in the orchestra like sun or wind or shimmer or ocean deep. We become like children. The sultan’s transformed.
Performance of Scheherazade from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
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Ferdinand Keller’s painting “Scheherazade and the Sultan Schariar” from Wikimedia Commons.
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