ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the component images, symbols and allegorical themes that play a substantial role in the music of Maurice Ohana and establishes, for the first time in a discussion of the composer’s work, these non-musical themes as representing an important influence on the development of his musical identity. The music of Ohana creates an enigmatic world of primeval archetypes where dreams and the imagined are made momentarily concrete. While Ohana’s web of allusive symbolism is most prominent in his works from the middle 1960s onwards, similar preoccupations can be traced in earlier works. Many of the early and transitional works are based on a variety of non-musical sources and include subjects drawn from literature and mythology, non-Spanish as well as Spanish. Most of Ohana’s works indicate their mythical references either directly through their titles or, in dramatic works, through the inclusion of particular characters.
