4th Concerto
There is a famous interpretation of the 4th Concerto's 2nd movement (Andante) which says that the dialogue between the powerful strings and the weak piano represents the myth of Orpheus and Euridice, exactly when Orpheus persuades the Gate Keeper of Hades to let him enter to rescue his wife. I had always thought that this programme belonged to Liszt, but I was told that an A.B. Marx created it? Was it Liszt or somebody else?
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I posted a detailed article I have about this whole subject here some time before, did you not read it?Originally posted by chopithoven:
There is a famous interpretation of the 4th Concerto's 2nd movement (Andante) which says that the dialogue between the powerful strings and the weak piano represents the myth of Orpheus and Euridice, exactly when Orpheus persuades the Gate Keeper of Hades to let him enter to rescue his wife. I had always thought that this programme belonged to Liszt, but I was told that an A.B. Marx created it? Was it Liszt or somebody else?
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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin -
If you type 'orpheus' in the search function you will find this amongst other things, but I have kindly cut and pasted it for you here:
By Owen Jander
The Fourth Piano Concerto comes from a period when Beethoven was engrossed in two new musical challenges: how to infuse music with poetic meaning, and how to unite the several movements of a larger work with a single idea. The chief examples of these concerns are the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies — both patently cyclic and programmatic. The two symphonies were premiered in a single concert on 22 December 1808 (the concert opened with the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony); and between them occurred the first public performance of the Fourth Piano Concerto. Not surprisingly this concerto turns out also to be cyclic and programmatic, its programme based on the ever-popular legend of Orpheus.
This, too, is not surprising, in view of the fact that Vienna, at the turn of the century was caught up in the discovery of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the greatest source of classical mythology In just these years Viennese audiences were treated to a wave of works based on favourite classical myths
— and for musicians, of course, Orpheus has always been the classical myth. (Interestingly enough, many of these new treatments of classical mythology were of a parodistic nature, testimony to the fun that Viennese audiences were having with these old tales).
The Orpheus legend is in three chapters: the Song of Orpheus, Orpheus and Euridice (or Orpheus in Hades), and Orpheus and the Bacchantes. These three chapters inspired the three movements of Beethoven’s concerto.
The Op.58 concerto seems to have originated with its second movement, which is Beethoven’s most amazing experiment in the realm of programme music. This movement was inspired by the Infernal Scene in Gluck’s Orfeo, the most famous scene in all eighteenth-century opera (a relationship already detected by Adolph Bernhard Marx 125 years ago). Internal evidence makes it clear, furthermore, that this concerto movement is a transcription of a brief work (only 72 bars long) originally conceived for solo piano. (Both Fanny Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt are known to have performed this movement by itself, as a solo piece). In 1803 Beethoven acquired a new piano that featured triple stringing and an una corda pedal. On such an instrument, through deft use of tbe shifting pedal, two distinct voices emerge. This suggested to Beethoven a dialogue between the Furies of Hades (tre corde) and the gentle-voiced Orpheus (una corda). The next step a very simple one — was to score the speeches of the Furies for strings, in angry fortissimo octaves.
The programme for the Andante con moto is amazingly detailed. The first 46 bars not only mirror the dialogue between Orpheus and the Furies in the famous Cluck opera, but translate into music a sequence of lines found in the Infernal Scene of an Orpheus opera that was performed in Vienna in 1807 — the same year as the first performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. Both the libretto and the score of this Orpheus were the work of Friedrich August Kanne, a close friend of Beethoven. To wit:
Ceister: Ha! Wer wagt es hier zu nah’n!
Orpheus: Ich wandle froh die Schreckensbahn.
Geister: Ha! Verwegner, geh zuruck!
Orpheus: Ich suche meines Lebens Cluck.
(Spirits: Ha! Who dares to approach this place!/Orpheus: I tread this path of terrors gladly/Spirits: Ha! Trespasser, get out of here!/Orpheus: I seek Euridice, who is my life’s joy)
The continuation of the programme in this movement is based on lines drawn from the classical Orpheus narratives of Ovid and Virgil. (The details of this programme are set forth in my article published in the Spring 1985 issue of l9th-Ceuturt1 Music).
Since this Andante con moto is narrative from beginning to end (and was presumably not originally devised to serve as a concerto movement), its form is unique and unprecedented. The first and third movements of the Concerto, on the other hand, are highly innovative treatments of existing classical forms. They are inspired by Ovid’s text, and so dozens and dozens of unusual events in the music reflect details in the poetic source. The famous opening of the concerto, for example — those five, tentative measures for the solo piano: Ovid says that before Orpheus sings his sdng he quietly tests the strings of his lyre with his thumb (Ovid, X, 143-47). And then there is that mysterious entrance of the strings, pianissimo, without the double-basses, and with the second violins playing below the violas — this is the strange key of B major! Here is Beethoven’s depiction of the amazement of Nature in response to the magical sound of the Orphic lyre (Ovid, X, 86-90).
In the Op.58 Concerto we encounter,as it were, three orchestras: in the first movement an orchestra of strings and winds; in the second, an orchestra of strings only; in the third, an orchestra of strings and winds plus trumpets aud timpaoi.
This third movement is fascinating! As the legend goes, Orpheus has offended the Bacchantes, so they decide to destroy him. To this end they must drown out the protective sound of his magical lyre; and so they pounce on him, howling in defiance, with an uproar of wind instruments, trumpets and drums (‘tibia, cornu, timpanaque’ — Ovid,XI, 1-19). The orchestral fortissimo at bar 32 — where the trumpets and timpani enter for the first time in this concerto — is the most jolting explosion in all of the music of Beethoven.
This finale is a study in dynamic violence like nothing in the history of the concerto —and it was made possible, of course, by the comparatively huge new pianos of the moment.
Just at the time that Beethoven was beginning to envision his Fourth Piano Concerto he commissioned a portrait of himself from his friend Willibrord Josef Mdhler. The Mahler portrait contains a network of symbolic devices, some of which have to do with the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, and some of which concern the ‘Orpheus’ Concerto. In his left hand, Beethoven grasps a lyra-guitar, symbolic of the ‘Song of Orpheus’ (even of those opening five bars). In the background is a lucus (Lat., a grove sacred to the dead), planted with cypress trees, in the vicinity of a temple —.and Virgil reports that Orpheus, on his way to Hades, journeys through a lucus. In the upper right-hand area is a writhing oak tree, a reference to the finale of the concerto. When the Bacchantes destroy Orpheus they are in turn punished by being metamorphosed into writhing oaks, their toes rooted into the ground (Ovid, XI, 67-84). At the very end of the concerto, as the Bacchantes’ theme is heard for the last time, the basses and bassoons, fortissimo, thrash about in frantic triplets.
Beethoven’s teacher in Bonn, Christian Cottlob Neefe, published an essay about instrumental music of pictorial intent. ‘The charlatan composer talks about painting in music, but fails to achieve that goal’, said Neefe; ‘the great, genuine artist, however, does indeed paint in music, but never talks about it.’ In Beethoven’s generation programme music was a fiercely debated issue. Quite understandably Beethoven found wisdom in presenting his Fourth Piano Concerto to his audience with no mention of the famous legend that had inspired it.
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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod CorkinComment
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I did not remember that post, but I thank it enormously. There is no more answer after this. Thanks.Comment
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If the programme was consciously created by Beethoven, where did he publish it? Where did he say that he was inspired by Gluck's Orfeo?Comment
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He did not say anything as far as I am aware, the whole connection with the 4th and the Orfeus myth is purely a hypothesis based on the nature of the music alone.Originally posted by chopithoven:
If the programme was consciously created by Beethoven, where did he publish it? Where did he say that he was inspired by Gluck's Orfeo?
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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod CorkinComment
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Well, in that short text it says "This movement was inspired by the Infernal Scene in Gluck’s Orfeo, the most famous scene in all eighteenth-century opera (a relationship already detected by Adolph Bernhard Marx 125 years ago)". That menas that Beethoven listened the opera and was inspired by it to compose the 2nd movement based on that dialogue between Orpheus and the Gate Keeper of Hades. And what do Ovid and Virgil have to do in this whole thing. I don't understand. Is this article by Mr.Jander really trustable?Originally posted by Rod:
He did not say anything as far as I am aware, the whole connection with the 4th and the Orfeus myth is purely a hypothesis based on the nature of the music alone.
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I believe it is just the writers hypothesis based on circumstantial evidence, we have nothing from Beethoven's mouth or pen on the matter. I suggest you read his reasoning for the connection and judge for yourself. There is no concrete answer to this issue, but the reasoning is quite persuasive to me. But being a Beethoven piece he does not sacrifice its purely musical integrity to fit a 'programme'.Originally posted by chopithoven:
Well, in that short text it says "This movement was inspired by the Infernal Scene in Gluck’s Orfeo, the most famous scene in all eighteenth-century opera (a relationship already detected by Adolph Bernhard Marx 125 years ago)". That menas that Beethoven listened the opera and was inspired by it to compose the 2nd movement based on that dialogue between Orpheus and the Gate Keeper of Hades. And what do Ovid and Virgil have to do in this whole thing. I don't understand. Is this article by Mr.Jander really trustable?
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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin
[This message has been edited by Rod (edited August 22, 2002).]Comment
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Well, you're right. I just thought, with that article, that there was some kind of historical evidence for this interpretation.
The programme, anyway, is quite interesting although I prefer to consider the concerto only music.Comment
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