Apollo e Marsyas

Jonathan Impett: Apollo e Marsyas. Viola d’amore, installation and computer (2019)
Marco Fusi – viola d’amore
Ovid recounts the contest between Apollo and the satyr Marsyas, who has challenged the god to a contest of musical skill. Tintoretto depicts the moment when their playing has just ended. They wait while Midas deliberates, each doubtless remembering the events differently. We don’t yet know the gruesome end to which Marsyas will be subjected. Apollo will be victorious, of course; at a certain point he inverts his instrument but keeps performing, a challenge that Marsyas is unable to respond to. In Tintoretto’s image, Apollo is shown playing a viola with a sympathetic string clearly visible; Marsyas plays a double pipe. This first of a pair of pieces addresses the fragmenting nonlinearity of Apollo’s memory – moments of clarity, others of obsession or loss - resonating in the threat of Marsyas’ presence and the enduring sound of the pipes. Our own memory has a parallel challenge in reconstructing the hymns chiselled into stones at Delphi following competitions some 2100 years ago, from which all the present musical material is taken.