Motive and narrative in Billy Budd
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Ex. 3.9), and one catches each triad before it vanishes into the cumulative wash of chromatic pitches spanning every register. From this initial chaotic searching, the interlude moves through a complicating imitative crisis (Ex. 3.10a) to blazing, major-mode triumph. The Mist theme is remade as a single, Lydian-tinged D-major arpeggiation (Ex. 3.10b), heralding the return, at its former A-major pitch level, of Vere’s Light prayer (Ex. 3.10c). All traces of the orchestra’s Bb-minor starting key are effaced in this fanfare-peroration. As the curtain rises, and Vere himself steps forward alone to warn Claggart (“beware! I’m not so easily deceived”), the orchestra retreats from commenting speaker to a conventional accompanying role. However schematic the content of the purely orchestral progression – from darkness to light – its dramaturgy prompts questions of interpretation. Are the orchestral themes of the interlude a form of speech (a comment outside actual plot events), or do they instead present an unwitnessed action? As the curtain falls, Vere is confused by the Mist, and prays for Light; as the curtain rises, he returns, finding that “the mists are vanishing.” There is an obvious contrast between the two ariosi – in which the orchestra supports the singer’s verbal revelation of thoughts (confusion, defiance) – and the intervening interlude, with its wordless working-out of the Mist/Light confusion. The interlude, one might claim, is less directly a depiction of a mental process than a consideration, by an independent orchestral voice, of the forces in play. Its sounding narrative is focalized “around” Vere, but this is not that same thing as offering a direct revelation of his state. Reporting the crisis he faces in the form of a struggle among referential themes, the interlude exploits to the full an orchestra’s potential for contrapuntal simultaneity (the first Light-theme entrance (at c in Ex. 3.9) overlaps with, and is itself dovetailed with, Mist-chains). The result is something beyond the sequentiality of verbal description, and independent of the outer plot (which does not advance while the curtain is down). The Mist interlude – an utterance of metaphysical significance – speaks of Vere’s situation, but in a manner clearly separate from his own on-stage singing. Restating themes announced vocally, the orchestra marks a distance – sonic and discursive – between vocal and instrumental “voice.” Timbrally, too, the orchestra moves to a supra-individual plane of utterance by instrumental doublings.54 In an orchestral environment dominated by blended hues, the solo trumpet fanfare heralding Vere’s return to the stage (Ex. 3.10b) is an icon of individual triumph over massed opposition. This emergence of soloistic utterance at the interlude’s climax heightens the retrospective, quotational ambience of the final “Oh, for the Light” statement, in woodwind octaves. Present triumph is set against the earlier