for solo soprano voice

9 minutes

Aggeloi III (2010) belongs to a family of works inspired by the idea of messengers in Sophoclean tragedy. The text is derived from the final messenger scene in Oedipus at Colonus. The messenger has just witnessed the miraculous passing of Oedipus, who, absolved from his sins, entered Hades with the honors of a god. Utterly awed by the incident, the messenger rushes to the Athenians to describe what took place. The first movement of Aggeloi III depicts a bewildered messenger that is struggling to articulate the extraordinary event to a possibly disbelieving audience. The second movement conveys the sense of awe; it is a simultaneous setting of six text fragments in a paradoxical 6-part polyphonic texture performed by a single singer. The individual melodic threads gradually weave a tree-like structure throughout the register of the soprano’s voice.