Beethoven's "Orpheus" concerto : Op. 58

[PDG]

Originally Posted by Philip
Thus, a group of angry women attacked him with their bare hands, and tore him to pieces. Orpheus' head floated down the river, still singing, and came to rest on the isle of Lesbos.




So how are they all in Lesbos, PDG?

Well, Michael, the ladies do seem very familiar with one another. All you need is love...

[Preston]

That's the trouble with women. You try and be nice to them and they end up tearing your head off and kicking it into the river. It's happened to me more than once.....

All too true. Though not all women, of course, .

Here is a little something for your troubles PDG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEiyGgWt6no

[Quijote]

"He [Orpheus] could charm the wild beasts...." is what Beethoven does with the music. If we return to the 2nd movement of the 4th concerto, the beast is the orchestra and Orpheus is the pianist. I am sure that you noticed that the pianist never plays louder than a whisper. Meanwhile, the orchestra roars with strong tutti passages that slowly and gradually diminsih to a whisper. In other words, the beast was subdued by Orpheus. Of course this is all "spin" because Beethoven did not programize the concerto.

I think the pianist does play louder than a whisper in this movement, Hofrat : bars 55 - 59, where the dynamic reaches up to ff. All "spin", perhaps, as you say. Beethoven did not explicitly give a program to this concerto, but after having read Jander's thesis I am beginning to think otherwise.

[Hofrat]

The movement is 72 bars long in which 67 of them the piano plays very soft (pp) and 5 loud (ff). What I forgot to mention was Beethoven instructs the pianist to press the soft pedal "uninterruptedly" for the whole movement. Beethoven definitely wanted the pianist to play soft, even when playing loud.

[Quijote]

About all these "massive orchestra" responding to the "quiet piano" comments that have featured in this thread : I recently purchased a CD with Arthur Schoonderwoerd (on a period fortepiano) with the Cristofori orchestra (period instruments), and this with (as far as I can tell) non equal-temperament tuning. The instruments are 1 x 1st violin, 1 x 2nd violin, 2 x viola, 2 x 'cello, 1 double bass and the rest (wind, brass & timpani) as specified in Beethoven's score. Of "HIP" interest is the fact that the performers have tried to create the original forces when the work was first premiered in the palace of Prince Lobkowitz, March 1807 (in the same "room" where the "Eroica" had its first play-throughs). The hall (which still stands, apparently) is 16m long, 7m wide and 7.5m high, with a floor area of 115 square metres and a volume of 900 cubic metres. There were 24 places for musicians and 18 benches for listeners. With a full room there was a reverberation of 1.6 seconds.
Given these various conditions, I feel there is some justifiable debate about such terms as "massive", "roaring" and other such adjectives. This is not to deny that for the later "Akademie" Beethoven probably upped the forces in terms of the strings.

[Quijote]

The movement is 72 bars long in which 67 of them the piano plays very soft (pp) and 5 loud (ff). What I forgot to mention was Beethoven instructs the pianist to press the soft pedal "uninterruptedly" for the whole movement. Beethoven definitely wanted the pianist to play soft, even when playing loud.

Except for the bars I mentioned above, where he calls for "due e poi tre corde", therefore negating the soft pedal effect for about 5 bars. But on the whole, yes, the overall impression is of the piano playing in a very restrained way.
The piano writing itself is a little curious, too : it's not virtuoso at all.

[Bonn1827]

I think you have a credible point here, Philip. I agree the forces weren't "massive" (and this was used contextually, probably) but I think it was also meant in a metaphorical sense of orchestral forces versus piano - David and Goliath in very simple terms. I would like to know where that performance venue is: the one you maintain is still standing.

I bought a new book on LvB today: "Beethoven - Missa Solemnis" (part of the Cambridge Music Handbooks series) by William Drabkin. I've started reading it but I think I need the "Missa" score in front of me as the musical examples are tiny. I hope to learn more about this extraordinary work. One thing he says stands out for me: he cites Paul Bekker (1925, p270) who says of LvB's late period, "Beethoven's new material was the poetry of transcendental idealism. He abandons (such) symbols from the visible world as he had used in the 'Eroica' and succeeding works, and turns towards the invisible, the divine". (Drabkin p.2) This gave me goose-bumps because it's exactly how I feel but have never able to express so eloquently.

[Bonn1827]

BTW, King Philip of Spain, how could you tell it was "non-equal temperament tuning"? Wasn't it just A415 pitch?

[Quijote]

BTW, King Philip of Spain, how could you tell it was "non-equal temperament tuning"? Wasn't it just A415 pitch?

Only because it seemed so out of tune. (And I don't mean the level of the "A = 415 or thereabouts!)

[Quijote]

So, a little more background to the Orpheus myth (in as much as it directly concerns Beethoven) is required. When Beethoven composed his 4th Piano Concerto (sometime between 1803-1806), the Orpheus legend was all the rage, so to speak. Whilst Ovid’s Metamorphoses was for about 4 centuries (since the beginning of printing technology) the best-selling book (after the Bible), it remained banned in Vienna by zealous Jesuits until 1792. The reason for their censorship was of course sex in its various aberrant manifestations (seduction, rape, bestiality and of course, homosexual love).

This ban was finally relaxed in 1791. A society (Gesellschaft) was set up to sponsor the publication of an extensively illustrated 3-volume edition of Ovid in German translation (with “suitable alterations” [read cuts and/or rewritings] of parts of the passages dealing with sex). There were 400 subscribers to this first Gesellschaft Edition of 1791, among whom were several known to Beethoven : Cajetan Giannatasio del Rio (who educated Beethoven’s nephew Karl), Josef Sonnleithner (whom Beethoven approached for the libretto for Fidelio) and Franz Joseph von Lobkovitz, in whose palace the 4th Piano Concerto was first performed in 1807.

In the years when Beethoven was composing his concerto he had ready access to Ovid’s original Latin text and German translation : available in bookshops and in the private libraries of his patrons. But Beethoven had an exposure to the Orpheus legend well before that.

[Quijote]

Beethoven’s earliest exposure to the Orpheus legend was in his youth in Bonn. It is of course highly doubtful that he ever heard a performance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, but he probably did know C.W. Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. The first performance took place at the Court Theatre in Vienna in 1762, and over the next three decades it was the most frequently and widely performed opera in Europe.

Now, in 1785 Gluck’s Orfeo was performed at the Court Theatre in Bonn. Whilst we have no documentary evidence, it is fair to suppose that the young Beethoven (15 years old at the time) was directly involved in the production, either as harpsichordist or perhaps among the viola players, and further, that he was very familiar with the score and libretto which Jander thinks was conducive for his later inspiration concerning the second movement of the 4th concerto.

[Quijote]

Also of note is Carl Friedrich Cramer’s Magazin der Musik (1782 – 1787), in which its editor and founder devoted more pages to Orpheus than any other topic. Cramer, by the way, published the German translation of Ranieri Calzabigi’s Italian-language libretto of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice opera, and was very enthusiastic of an Orpheus opera premiered in Copenhagen in 1786 (entitled Orpheus og Euridice, the first “serious” opera with a Danish libretto ), composed by Johann Gottlieb Naumann with libretto by Charlotte Dorothea Biehl. (Note to Hofrat : please research this, if you have the time.)
Whatever the historical ephemera, of note is the fact that Beethoven’s teacher Neefe subscribed to this “magazin” and may well have lent it to his keen student Beethoven.

[Quijote]

Turning now to other historical ephemera that has (is ephemera singular or plural?) bearing on Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto (according to Owen Jander), I would like to summarise some points from the book that have to do with satire and the vogue - at that time - for “textless instrumental dialogue”. Jander at this point is rather vague, so perhaps you will allow me to elaborate as I try to develop the thread

As is most human (I suppose this is so, not being human myself), what quickly becomes “mainstream” in a given culture is quickly assimilated by satirical treatment: ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ would be a fair approximation. That the Orpheus legend (once published in the vernacular) became “fair game” for satire is not surprising, but the implications of this are interesting as far as the 4th concerto is concerned, as it touches directly on issues of “programme” (implicit or explicit, pace Hofrat).

When Beethoven left Vienna in March 1787 (to return to his dying mother) he may have missed the Viennese première of a musical satire of the Orpheus myth by Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Die Liebe in Narrenhause (Love in an Insane Asylum), a singspiel satire on Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Seraglio (Abduction from the Harem). Apparently, the audience would have enjoyed the “topicality” of the theme as Emperor Joseph II had just inaugurated in Vienna one of Europe’s first insane asylums, and the public were not slow to clamour for tickets to gape at the poor inmates restrained in cages. (We have not come far since then, unfortunately).

Anyway, the point to be made here is that what delighted Viennese audiences is the figure of Orpheus who comes to the asylum to rescue his Euridice, gaining entrance to the institution (read: Hades) by persuading people he is crazy by “talking” to them with his violin (read: harp). The delight for the audiences in Beethoven’s time is the “artifice” of a composer “saying” things with textless instrumental music. Are we not reminded here of the impact of the Eroica symphony for the same?

Dittersdorf (who was also a famous violinist) had created a sensation some years before (in the popular Augarten concerts) with his programmatic symphonies based on stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, wherein he used his violin to imitate the speech of frogs and so on. Music as direct speech? More needs to be said.

[Quijote]

I will take a break here as I organise my next postings. The "nitty-gritty" is yet to come, as all this is by way of preamble. For the non-anglophones on this forum (and I must say, your command of English puts some of us to shame!), when I say "nitty-gritty" I mean the "main theme" of this thread.

[Quijote]

And in case we (or I) forget, the main theme (or contention) is that Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto is an entirely programmatic composition.