Sirens’ Song

First performance: 25 March 2021 – Pécs
Pannon Philharm. Orch.
Conductor: Peter Eötvös

For millennia, sirens – killer birds with women’s heads – have been the most famous singers in mythology.

My composition “Sirens’ song” was inspired by three authors. According to Homer, the sirens seduced sailors with their bewitching song and then killed them. Ulysses cautiously puts wax in his ears, so that he can lay eyes on but cannot hear them. Kafka suggests that the sirens cunningly fooled Ulysses because they refused to sing for him, anyway.
The sirens are the muses of the underworld. Non only Joyce did they seduce but also all composers who have tried to make audible what Ulysses could never hear.

/Peter Eötvös/