Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra — Program Notes
In Metamorphosis, from Myth to Music, we meet the first-century Latin poet whose telling of the Greek myths inflamed the creative minds of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Ted Hughes, Rembrandt and Picasso.
Publius Ovidius Naso, more commonly known to us as Ovid, was born in 43 B.C. in Sulmo, a town near Rome. Destined for studies in law and a career in public service, he chose instead the life of a poet, creating a fifteen-volume anthology of myths, titled Metamorphoses because each story features a human transformed into a tree, a star or an animal in explanation of a psychological truth or phenomenon of nature.
From the time of the Middle Ages, Ovid's work was used as a textbook for the learning of Latin, and it became the vehicle through which most Europeans came to know the Greek myths. Because the transformations in the stories are dramatic, touching, and full of physical motion, they have had enormous appeal to artists of all disciplines across the centuries, and it is said that the Metamorphoses, next to the Bible, is the most influential book in the history of European culture.
In the world of music no composers have embraced Metamorphoses more heartily than those of the baroque era. The heroes and lovers of Ovid's stories were particularly suited to roles in the emerging genre of opera and the characters of Orpheus, Echo, Pygmalion, Semele, Acis and Galatea, Perseus and Medusa, Jason and the Argonauts, Theseus and the Minotaur all stepped onto the opera stages of London, Paris, Versailles, Berlin and Venice.
Because baroque opera audiences knew Ovid's stories so well, they were in tune with the nuances of character painting in the music in a way few of us are today. Our programme is designed to recapture this dynamic by presenting some of the baroque period's most wonderful music in the context of a very direct telling of the stories which inspired it. We are thrilled to have famed Canadian actor R.H. Thomson joining the orchestra in the role of the great storyteller Ovid himself.
17th- and 18th-century France explored Ovid with particular fervour. In the grounds at Versailles, there were arbours with topiary figures from the Metamorphoses, and the court of Louis XIV loved the swashbuckling heroism of Theseus, Perseus and Jason. The official court composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully turned to the story of Acis, Galatea and the one-eyed monster Polyphemus for his last opera, composed in honour of the Dauphin, the oldest son of the king. Because Lully's operas showcased the dancers of the royal ballet , we have a wealth of purely instrumental music with which to portray the characters and events of the drama.
A generation later, Jean-Philippe Rameau, who had written his first opera in 1733 at the age of 50, chose two of Jason's Argonauts as the subjects for his 1737 production of Castor et Pollux. Our concert begins with the music for the transformation of the twins into the constellation of Gemini. Rameau's one-act "opera-ballet" Pygmalion also dwells on moment of metamorphosis, when a beautiful statue is transformed into a living woman. After testing her new voice, the statue tries out her legs in the rousing contredanse which ends the first half of the programme.
Musical possibilities suggested by the sad story of Echo, whose body faded away after she was rejected by Narcissus, particularly appealed to 17th-century composers experimenting with new sonic effects such as those found in Biagio Marini's 1629 publication of violin sonatas and sinfonias. Henry Purcell also portrayed Echo in his Fairy Queen, an opera based on Shaespeare's most Ovidian drama, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
We have used Ovid's rendition of the "Contest of Pan and Apollo" which explores the rivalry between players of wind and stringed instruments, to present music from two of Vivaldi's virtuosic concertos from early 18th-century Venice. This story was set to music by J.S. Bach who drew on the Metamorphoses in a number of his secular works. In the Allegro movement from his triple violin concerto, we make a whimsical visit to the three Graces, the daughters of Jupiter who personified grace, charm and beauty.
Our concert ends with the heartrending tale of the married couple Alcyone and Ceyx. Set to music by the great Parisian viola da gamba virtuoso Marin Marais, Alcione contains one of the most arresting scenes in baroque opera - the depiction of a tempest in which the ship carrying King Ceyx to consult the oracle of Apollo is destroyed and the crew is lost. This scene required the earliest use of the double bass in French opera. and enjoyed great fame throughout the baroque period.