Tiresias – Carol Barnett

Composer: Carol Barnett

Text by: Marisha Chamberlain

Instrumentation: SATB, piano

Duration: Approx. 5 minutes

Date Written:  2020

Composer’s note: Tiresias, the most famous prophet of ancient Greek mythology, is featured in stories about the King of Thebes, Oedipus, and Odysseus. The complex figure of Tiresias can be seen as a celebration of the fluidity of life’s experiences. Tiresias spent portions of their life as a woman and portions as a man, portions seeing and blind, and were granted the gift of seven lifespans. Tiresias thus became a liminal figure--arbitrating the spaces between male and female, sightedness and non-sightedness, mortality and immortality, and human and divine. Their experiences gave them extraordinary depth of perception from all perspectives, and though Tiresias’ prophecies were often very brief and sometimes enigmatic, they were never wrong. As usual with prophetic figures, it was (and still is) up to the people consulting the prophet to figure out what was meant and how to translate the prophetic words into action

Sample recording by First Readings Project/J. David Moore

text

A man called Tiresias! A prophet!
Young as a blade of grass.
Old as the molten core.
Stepped to earth as a man.
Then was transformed to a woman.
Of man and of woman,
What have you come to know?
Speak to us, Tiresias.
Oh, young men and young women,
I, Tiresias,
Speak to you only in these words:
Keep close.
Keep close to each other.
Keep close.

A man called Tiresias!
A prophet whose eyes were blinded.
How could he see to speak?
He only saw more clearly.
Turned from the past.
And saw the future!
Of days past and future days,
What have you come to know?
Speak to us, Tiresias.
Oh, you children of the future,
I, Tiresias,
Speak to you only in these words:
Hold on.
Hold on together.
Hold on.