0790NOTOrpheusEurydice_Beethoven

0790NOTOrpheusEurydice_Beethoven

OGCMA s.v. "Orpheus and Eurydice"
Classical Sources:
Plato, Symposium, 179c-e
Diodorus Siculus, Bibl., 4.25.4, 81-82
Vergil, Georgics 4.315-558
Ovid Metamorphoses 10.1-85, 11.66
Apollodorus Libr. 1.3.2
Hyginus Poet. Astron. 2.7

Ludwig van Beethoven, "Piano Concerto no. 4 in G major, op. 58, second movement Andante con moto, first performed March 1807.

See Owen Jander, "Beethoven's 'Orpheus in Hades': the 'andante con moto' of the Fourth Piano Concerto," 19th-Century Music 8 (Spring 1985) 195 - 212. Esp. p. 205 divides the movement into 5 programmatic sections: mm. 1-38 Orpheus addresses the hostile Furies, mm. 38-47 Furies are won over by Orphic song, mm. 47 - 55 Orpheus guides Eurydice with lyre, mm. 55-64 Orpheus' retrospection, mm. 64 - 72 Eurydice falls back into darkness.

Image at right is J.K. Stieler's 1820 portrait of Beethoven, taken from Wikipedia Commons.

"In the second movement loud, sombre unison passages for strings alternate with gentle, doleful harmonious phrases for piano, and gradually the strident tone of the strings subsides. Such an unusual structure has suggested to many writers the possibility of some underlying programmatic idea. Czerny suggests it recalls some antique tragic scene, while other writers [including Franz Lizst, but many other also] have more specifically suggested Orpheus with his lyre taming the wild beasts or the Furies [of the underworld, as in Gluck's Orfeo]." (Barry Cooper, CD notes Decca Records 1988)

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.