ABSTRACT
Nausicaa was in every sense a Greek-American artistic collaboration. Presented as part of the 1961 athens festival, the opera was written by a composer of American citizenship who was living in Greece at the time of its performance. Whilst Greek music was the starting point for Nausicaa, Western music was also – perhaps inevitably – prominent in Glanville-Hicks's musical thinking. Glanville-Hicks's commentary also points to a change in the modal usage in Nausicaa. Where changes of tonal centre had been used to articulate structure in the earlier works, she used modal continuity as a way of linking the various sections. The Prologue comes to an end with nausicaa declaring that Phemius would 'someday change his tune'. Her declaration is set to a chromatic turning figure which comes to be associated with her anguish throughout the opera. Nausicaa's heated response, by contrast, is set in rapidly changing tonal centres and modes, with dissonance used as effective word painting.
