Deutscher and Hackett

In Fugue on the Theme of Ariadne, c.1956, Gleeson chose a subject that fascinated artists over the millennia. From the fifth century BC onwards, Ariadne and Theseus, and Ariadne and Bacchus (Dionysus) excited not only the vase painters of ancient Athens, but also artists throughout the Greek and Roman worlds of classical art. It reached its apotheosis in Titian's Venetian masterpiece, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520-23, in the collection of the National Gallery, London. Ariadne inspired Anton Chekhov, Richard Strauss and others to magnificent literature and opera. With its combination of human sacrifice, the Minotaur, love at first sight, abandonment, and then marriage to Bacchus god of wine, the story of Ariadne had every thing to inspire works of epic grandeur. Gleeson gave it added interest by presenting it in the guise of a fugue in its twentieth-century journey through the mind. His contrapuntal composition is as labyrinthine as the Minotaur's home.

DAVID THOMAS