Cassandra, or Don't Girls Love Horses?

Cassandra, or Don’t Girls Love Horses?

for Soprano, Cello, and Piano

Vocal Range

E4-Ab5

Program Notes

Cassandra, or Don’t Girls Love Horses? was commissioned by Ensemble for These Times. The work will be premiered by Nanette McGuinness, Abigail Monroe, and Margaret Halbig on April 17, 2021. The piece sets a text by Kendra Preston Leonard focuses on the mythological prophetess, Cassandra. Cursed by the gods, she could see the future but was thought mad all around her. She knew of Troy’s terrible fate, but was powerless to convince anyone of the dangers posed by the wooden horse that would be her city’s downfall.

I have always been drawn to Cassandra’s tragic story, and in light of current events such as #metoo and the backlash against women running for government office, I saw a striking parallel. Women’s views, advice, and truths are regularly discounted by both individuals and society at large. This failure to heed women’s voices causes great damage, and is not a curse from the gods but a product of patriarchal culture. If we pay attention to the lesson of Cassandra’s story, perhaps, we can start to change that culture and avoid our own Trojan fall.

Leonard’s text portrays Cassandra as someone who has grown from an innocent, perhaps naive, child to a mature woman struggling to find a path forward amidst public ridicule. She has the strength to repeatedly warn her people about the coming attack despite their scorn, yet is worn down by the enormous stress of being helpless to prevent her horrific visions. She is torn between wanting to retreat into the warm, safe memories of her past and fighting against a fate she ultimately is powerless to change. Leonard uses the modern trope of girls who love horses to signify both Cassandra’s nostalgia for her youth and the way her society dismisses her warnings as the dreams of a foolish girl.

Author’s Note

Cassandra, princess of Troy, prophecies the arrival of and destruction contained within the Trojan Horse, given to Troy as a symbol of submission by Greeks as guided by Athena. Cassandra’s song begins wistfully as she remembers her youth with horses, but becomes increasingly agitated that the giant horse facing the gates of their city is the one she has seen in a prophetic vision, bringing with it “death and fate and death and fate” (from Homer, The Odyssey, scroll 4, line 21, trans. Samuel Butler, based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. A. C. Fifield, London. 1900).

- Kendra Preston Leonard

Contact Information

Jessica Rudman | Email: jessica@jessicarudman.com | Website: www.jessicarudman.com

Text

I was a girl in Troy, and like so many girls, I loved horses.

(in a reverie)

A pony from Thessaly was my darling, and the one who had a star on her nose; and the one I rode the day before I was cursed was gentle and swift on the plains.

When I was a girl I rode on the horses that the King my father owned. They were meant for racing and acrobatics in the hippodrome, but I rode my horses away from the men and their spears, and their catalogues of ships.

And for the days when the wind from the sea was cold I stayed in the stables where I brushed all the horses and I braided their manes.

(in her present, more matter-of-fact)

I was a girl in Troy, and like so many girls, I loved horses. Now I am my city’s most famous mad woman, and I love horses-But that beautiful mountainous wooden horse

I can see right now, outside our gates-Friends, I do not love that horse.

I have warned you and warned you, but you think my dreams are those of a girl, just a girl who loves horses.

Please listen, please hear: I have seen horses in my dreams where I dream of smoke and fire and that is the horse that I saw in my sleep when I dreamed of the fall of Troy.

Didn’t I tell you? You called me mad you said what is wrong with you don’t girls love horses?

This wooden horse brings men who reek of heat and flesh and the spears I have long avoided; this horse is a ship for land and siege, that races in funeral games.

This horse will not run with me down to the bay in the fresh spring grass, This horse will not run with me around the track or out through the gate;

This horse is not a horse for escaping.

I saw this horse and its fir-tree flanks and its body covered with skins; oh I foresaw it, I foretold it, and you laughed-and you said you are mad don’t girls love horses?

This horse, why a horse, oh for Troy loves its horses, but my friends this horse has no teeth but swords and this horse will eat our hearts as we run.

Heed me now, mark this danger. Do not let us stable this horse, say the stables are full, send it away;

it will kick and bite and throw us under its giant rolling hooves;

no foals rest within its womb but a host of men all armed

and there in the heights is the priest felled by the altar where now the bull runs free, the priest with serpents knotted at his arms as he shouts-as I have said-do not trust the horse.

Trojans, if you love your horses now, ride away from this one; bring me my mare sure-footed and blazed-no, no-give her to this girl by my side, this girl, this girl who loves horses, so that she can flee. I will not escape:

I have dreamt that too, in a wretched curl of sleep.

Let me tell you once more, I beg you to believe me:

In the dark body of the wooden horse, in the belly of this mighty horse we will find the men I have seen: Forty men there and two in its eyes bringing no gift but death and fate death and fate and death and fate and death:

Yet you keep asking don’t girls love horses?

“Girls Love Horses” © 2020 by Kendra Preston Leonard. Used with permission.

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