The Music of Macbeth (the Devil in the Details)

Working with Composer Ivan Dillard 

Part of Fair Assembly's mission is to work with artists of many disciplines. Resident composer and founding member Ivan Dillard (SMU '08) co-wrote and performed the music of Romeo and Juliet, and returns this year as composer and cellist for Macbeth. Actor Mac Welch (SMU '20) will appear as Seyton/Lennox, and will also play bells. As in our inaugural production, all sound will be created live.

Though Macbeth has a less pronounced need for music (no dance scene, no funeral, no wedding), we ask the question, "How does the play sound?" In the words of our youngest cast member, fourth-grader Nadine DeBerardinis, "It's almost more sound than music." We have a little of both. Listen here.

In the clip above, Ivan is working in B Locrian mode: all the white notes on the piano starting and ending on B natural. Locrian is known for its dissonance and instability; harmonizing with it proves difficult, and its tritone interval sounds like it wants to resolve. A tritone is often called "diabolus in musica" – latin for "the Devil in music". In the middle ages, tritones were avoided because they sounded so unsettling.

What is more unsettling than not knowing? We often see the witches as puppeteers of this world, deciding the fate of the characters in advance. To us, this feels a bit more Romeo and Juliet ("some consequence yet hanging in the stars"). This story—indeed the nightmare of Macbeth—depends so much on what could be, rather than what is. Is there more in the witches than mortal knowledge? We invite audiences rather to stand "rapt in the wonder of it."  
 

LADY MACBETH  
Naught’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content.
’Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.