Skip to main content
Log in

Poetry into Music: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Dittersdorf’s ‘Twelve Symphonies on Ovid’s Metamorphoses’

  • Article
  • Published:
International Journal of the Classical Tradition Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Notes

  1. See F. J. Miller, ‘Some Features of Ovid’s Style: II. The Dramatic Element in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, The Classical Journal, Vol. 15, No. 7, 1920, pp. 417–35.

  2. The Ovide moralisé is an anonymous French didactic poem (1316–1328), which interprets each of Ovid’s stories with a Christian slant. The 17 or so manuscripts that survive contain some thousand illustrations, many of which can be viewed online courtesy of the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon website. For interest, see too C. Lord, ‘Three manuscripts of the Ovid moralisé’, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 57, No. 2, 1975, pp. 161–75.

  3. The ‘Metamorphosis: Titian 2012’ exhibition centered around the three Titian masterworks inspired by Ovid’s Diana myth: Diana and Callisto, Diana and Actaeon, and The Death of Actaeon. The paintings were set alongside selections from Ted Hughes’s ‘Tales from Ovid’ and were exhibited in conjunction with specially commissioned poems, works of visual art and performances of a new ballet triptych. The National Gallery and The Royal Ballet published a catalogue book entitled Titian Metamorphosis Art Music Dance, Art Books Publishing, 2013 (ISBN 978-1-908970-04-6), the new poems were also compiled in a book to accompany the exhibition: Metamorphosis: Poems Inspired by Titian, 2012 (ISBN 978 1 85709 547 0).

  4. The bibliography is vast, the following is an overview.

    General: Ovid Renewed, ed. C. Martindale, Cambridge: C. U. P., 1988; E. K. Rand, Ovid and his Influence, New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1963; A Companion to Classical Receptions, eds. L. Hardwick and C. Stray, Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.

    For painting: E. Panofsky, Problems in Titian, mostly iconographic, London: Phaidon, 1969, pp. 139–71; N. Llewellyn, ‘Illustrating Ovid’ in Ovid Renewed, ed. C. Martindale (n. 4 above); C. Allen, ‘Ovid and art’, in The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, ed. P. Hardie, Cambridge: C. U. P., 2002; J. Lawson, ‘Titian’s Diana Pictures: The Passing of an Epoch’, Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 25, No. 49, 2004, pp. 49–63; P. Barolsky, ‘As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art’, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 2, 1998, pp. 451–74.

    For sculpture, interesting articles on Bernini include A. T. Wilkins, ‘Bernini and Ovid: Expanding the Concept of Metamorphosis’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2000, pp. 383–408; P. Barolsky, ‘Ovid, Bernini and Petrification’, Arion, Third Series, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2005, pp. 149–62; P. Barolsky, ‘Bernini and Ovid’, Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1996, pp. 29–31.

    For poetry and literature: T. Ziolkowski, Ovid and the Moderns, Ithaca: NY: Cornell University Press, 2005; Sarah Annes Brown, The Metamorphoses of Ovid: From Chaucer to Ted Hughes, London: Duckworth, 1999; R. Rees, Ted Hughes and The Classics, especially chapters 9–11; The Cambridge Companion, ed. P. Hardie (n. 4 above), especially C. Burrows, ‘Re-embodying Ovid: Renaissance Afterlives’, pp. 301–19, and D. F. Kennedy, ‘Recent Receptions of Ovid’, pp. 320–55; A Companion to Ovid, ed. P. E. Knox, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, especially Part 5: Literary Receptions, contributors include C. McNelis, J. M. Fyler, H. James, G. Braden, T. Ziolkowski, C. Martin; L. Enterline, The rhetoric of the body from Ovid to Shakespeare, Cambridge: C. U. P., 2000.

  5. The score used for this paper is Ausgewählte Orchesterwerke von Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Abtheilung I, ed. J. Liebeskind, Leipzig: Gebrüder Reinecke, 1899. It is available online through IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library. Three widely available recordings are: Catilena, conducted by Adrian Shepherd (Chandos, 2006); the Prague Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Bohumil Gregor (Supraphon, 1990); and the Budapest Failoni Orchestra, conducted by Hanspeter Gmür (Naxos, 1995).

  6. The Latin used throughout is taken from Ovid ‘Metamorphoses’ with an English translation by F. J. Miller, revised by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library, 3rd edition, London, 1977; however, any English translations are my own.

  7. Some musicological studies of Ovidian instrumental works do exist, but if they make the connection between the composer and the poet, they do not go so far as to connect the music with the language. In the case of Dittersdorf’s ‘Twelve Symphonies’, I think particularly of the otherwise excellent F. E. Kirby, ‘Expression in Dittersdorf’s Program Symphonies on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” ’, Revista de Musicologia, Vol. 16, No. 6, Del XV Congresso de la Sociedad Internacional de Musicologia: Culturas Musicales Del Mediterráneo y sus Ramificaciones: Vol. 6 (1993), pp. 3408–18; R. Will, ‘When God Met the Sinner, and Other Dramatic Confrontations in Eighteenth-Century Instrumental Music’, Music and Letters, Vol. 78, No. 2, 1997, pp. 175–209; R. Will The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven, Cambridge: C. U. P., 2002.

  8. Tangentially related is D. H. Porter, ‘Motivic Transformation in Classical Literature and Music’, The Classical World Vol. 70, No. 4, Dec 1976 – Jan 1977, pp. 257–66 in which Porter outlines how musical composers and ancient writers share similar technical methods when connecting passages and contrasting their various juxtapositions.

  9. The mythological handbooks, such as Andrew Tooke’s Pantheon (1698) and Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary (1806), show that many of the myths traditionally associated with Ovid had other ancient origins (The Homeric Hymns, Hesiod, Apollodorus, Virgil etc.). See too A Companion to Ovid, ed. P. E. Knox (n. 4 above); J. B. Solodow, The world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, London: Chapel Hill, 1988, pp. 226–31. For ancient variants on the Diana and Actaeon myth, see C. C. Schlam, ‘Diana and Actaeon: Metamorphosis of a Myth’, Classical Antiquity, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1984, pp. 82–110.

  10. For example Tennyson’s use of the Greek title Demeter and Persephone, rather than Latin Ceres and Proserpina suggest an influence other than Ovid: Ovid Renewed, ed. C. Martindale (n. 4 above), p. 216.

  11. Ovid Renewed, ed. C. Martindale (n. 4 above), p. 215 ff..

  12. To avoid confusion with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, henceforth the musical title will be in quotation marks and shortened to ‘Twelve Symphonies’, the poem’s title will always be italicized.

  13. R. Will, The Characteristic Symphony (n. 7 above) p. 13.

  14. Instrumental music had long been composed but it had usually been heard in the context of operas and oratorios, in church or court ceremonial occasions, or was simply used as a teaching aide.

  15. See W. S. Newman, The sonata in the classic era, New York: Norton, 1972; C. Rosen, Sonata forms, New York: Norton, 1980.

  16. Magazin der Musik 1 (783): 1252, quoted in R. Will, The Characteristic Symphony (n. 7 above), p. 14.

  17. For the development of characteristic music see especially R. Will, Ibid.; F. Niecks, Programme Music in the Last Four Centuries, London: Novello, 1907 is dated but charts characteristic music and its evolution into the programmatic music of the 19th-century. See also F. E. Kirby, ‘Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony as a “Sinfonia caracteristica” ’, The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 4, 1970, pp. 605–23.

  18. R. Will, The Characteristic Symphony (n. 7 above), p. 1.

  19. See The Autobiography of Karl von Dittersdorf (as dictated to his son at the end of his life), translated from the German by A. D. Coleridge, New York, 1970.

  20. There are several reasons for me to regard Dittersdorf as a progressive: his exploration of the still-developing symphonic form; his interest in pushing the boundaries of characteristic music; his musical language which is on the cusp of the Baroque and the Classical, straddling both styles and encorporating aspects of both. Worthy of note too is that he played quartets with two of the most pioneering musicians of any generation: Haydn (violin) and Mozart (viola). (Vanhal was the cellist, little-known now, but famous in his own age.) There can be little doubt that the great Ovidian operas of Lully, Handel, Rameau, and of his friend Gluck, would have been well known to him. Some of Dittersdorf’s innovative ideas and techniques will be highlighted in the analysis that follows, but for an alternative view of Dittersdorf as a shallow and somewhat regressive composer, see F. O. Souper, ‘The Music of Dittersdorf’, Music and Letters, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1930, pp. 141–5, the article is dated but interesting nevertheless.

  21. N. Llewellyn in Ovid Renewed, ed. C. Martindale (n. 4 above), p. 155, suggests that over the centuries Ovid has been particularly dominant in art because of the patronage of the aristocracy who considered Ovidian themes to be well-suited to their extravagant lifestyles (indeed, in Dittersdorf’s autobiography we find entertaining evidence of a routine use of Ovidian themes within courtly life: there are tales of musical fêtes in honour of Bacchus, an open-air ballet on the story of Daphne, and a magnificent Roman-esque water spectacle). Certainly it is likely that Dittersdorf, although he did not write on commission, composed the ‘Twelve Symphonies’ at least with the traditional subject preferences of the aristocracy in mind. The fact that he even had the support of the Emperor Joseph in performing and publicizing the ‘Twelve Symphonies’ (The Autobiography of Dittersdorf [n. 19 above], p. 244 ff.) reflects the worthiness of the subject matter for the elite.

  22. See F. Niecks, Programme Music (n. 17 above) especially for this.

  23. F. Niecks, Ibid., p. 3.

  24. See F. J. Miller, ‘Some Features of Ovid’s Style: III. Ovid’s Methods of Ordering and Transition in the Metamorphoses’, The Classical Journal, Vol. 16, No. 8, 1921, pp. 464–76; J. B. Solodow, The world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (n. 9 above) pp. 9–36.

  25. R. Will, The Characteristic Symphony (n. 7 above), p. 31.

  26. Initially the symphony was a three-movement form, but Dittersdorf preferred the four-movement version that was more common by the late 18th-century. C. Rosen, Sonata forms (n. 15 above).

  27. The contents of the pamphlet can now be found in C. Krebs, Dittersdorfiana, Berlin, 1900 (repr. New York: Da Capo Press, 1972). Translation from the French is my own.

  28. It cannot be surprising that Dittersdorf felt an affinity with Ovid’s sympathetic portrayal of the innocent musician caught up in the fighting and gave him a whole movement.

  29. For the many Christian and moralizing allegorical interpretations of this story, see D. Javitch, ‘Rescuing Ovid from the Allegorizers’, Comparative Literature, Vol. 31, No. 2, 1978, pp. 97–107.

  30. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above) p. 174. The passage is translated in R. Will, The Characteristic Symphony (n. 7 above), pp. 76–7 as ‘the satisfaction [Perseus] takes in the effect of the shield surpasses all bounds, and leads him to mock the transformed ones with vulgar and unbridled irony.’

  31. A similar fall from grace is seen in Arioso’s anti-allegorical reinterpretation of this story, Orlando Furioso, in which the hero Ruggiero attempts to rape the maiden Angelica after he has rescued her. See D. Javitch, ‘Rescuing Ovid’ (n. 29 above).

  32. This was in keeping with the century-old Christian interpretative tradition. Of the earliest examples there is the Ovid moralisé of the 14th-century (n. 2 above) and the Ovid moralizatus by Petrus Berchorius (1340–1342). For an interesting article on the earliest allegorical commentaries see P. Dronke, ‘Metamorphoses: Allegory in Early Medieval Commentaries on Ovid and Apuleius’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 72, 2009, pp. 21–39. For an article focused largely on the evolution of the allegorical tradition in England and Italy, see R. F. Hardin, ‘Ovid in Seventeenth-Century England’, Comparative Literature, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1972, pp. 46–62; see too E. K. Rand, Ovid and his Influence (n. 4 above); L. K. Born, ‘Ovid and Allegory’, Speculum, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1934, pp. 362–79; and for Ovid’s own use of allegory, see J. B. Solodow, The world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (n. 9 above) pp. 196–202.

  33. So too does Ovid impose his own contemporary social setting on the mythology and gods in the Metamorphoses, see A. H. F. Griffin, ‘Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses”, Greece and Rome, Second Series, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1977, p. 62; J. B. Solodow, The world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (n. 9 above), see chapter 3 for Ovid’s anachronisms and Romanizing tendencies.

  34. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 172: ‘The flute solo has considerable charm for those who imagine Diana bathing.’

  35. See S. Hinds, ‘Landscape and the Aesthetics of Place’ in The Cambridge Companion, ed. P. Hardie (n. 4 above), pp. 122–49; H. Parry, ‘Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Violence in a Pastoral Landscape’, Transactions and Preceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 95, 1964, pp. 268–82. For full analyses of this passage and the whole Actaeon tale see Metamorfosi / Ovid Vol. 2, ed. A. Barchiesi, Rome: Fondazioni Lorenzo Valla, 2005-; Metamorphoses I–IV, ed. D. E. Hill, Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1985.

  36. For a fuller study of Actaeon’s ignorance, vulnerability and Ovid’s inversion of his own rape conventions, see J. Heath, ‘Diana’s Understanding of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”’, The Classical Journal, Vol. 86, No. 3, 1991, pp. 233–43. J. Lawson, ‘Passing of an Epoch’, (n. 4 above) makes some interesting remarks about the culpability of Actaeon and Diana, and Titian’s introduction of Venus.

  37. This was not an original interpretation, there are numerous artworks and literary versions of the myth, ancient and contemporary, which portray Actaeon as a guilty voyeur, see C. C. Schlam, ‘Diana and Actaeon’ (n. 9 above).

  38. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 172.

  39. Bars are always numbered as if without the repeats.

  40. For wider studies see A. Keith, ‘Sexuality and Gender’ in A Companion to Ovid, ed. P. E. Knox (n. 4 above), p. 355 ff. and related bibliography. See too C. Segal, ‘Ovid’s Metamorphic Bodies: Art, Gender and Violence in the “Metamorphoses”’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vol. 5, No 3, 1998, pp. 9–41; see L. Enterline, The rhetoric of the body (n. 4 above), especially pp. 106–9 for the darker side of sexuality – violence, violation and its relationship to language and speech.

  41. See R. O. A. M. Lyne, ‘Lavinia’s Blush: Vergil’s Aeneid 12.64–70’, Greece and Rome, Second Series, Vol. 30, No. 1, 1983, pp. 55–64. For a broad piece on the similes in the Metamorphoses, see S. G. Owen, ‘Ovid’s Use of the ‘Simile’, The Classical Review, Vol. 45, No. 3, 1931, pp. 97–106.

  42. For an introductory paper on this theme, see J. J. H. Savage, ‘The “Wrath” Theme in Ovid’, The Classical Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 21, 1943, pp. 245–6.

  43. Will suggests that Dittersdorf’s use of such unsparing endings sets him apart from his contemporaries and is symptomatic of Dittersdorf’s acceptance of his own turbulent and violent time. See R. Will, The Characteristic Symphony (n. 7 above), pp. 75 ff. It could also be a mark of Dittersdorf looking ahead to the more dramatic and tragic inclinations of the late-Classical and early-Romantic composers.

  44. A most important book on the subject is C. Rosen, Sonata forms (n. 15 above). See also W. S. Newman, The sonata in the classic era (n. 15 above).

  45. Sonata Form also proved a useful tool for the composition of new music for wealthy amateur musicians who wanted to be able to easily play and enjoy piano sonatas etc..

  46. For full analyses of this passage and the full Phaethon tale see Metamorfosi Vol. 1, ed. A. Barchiesi (n. 35 above); Metamorphoses I-IV, ed. D. E. Hill (n. 35 above).

  47. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 170.

  48. For a short paper on colour in the Metamorphoses, including in this passage, see P. Barolsky, ‘Ovid’s Colours’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2003, pp. 51–6.

  49. argenti bifores radiabant lumine valvae, ‘the double doors shone with the light of silver’. In a golden line two pairs of words (here argenti and lumine, bifores and valvae) are separated by the verb (radiabant).

  50. See J. B. Solodow, The world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (n. 9 above), pp. 203–31 (especially pp. 228–31).

  51. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 170.

  52. See E. Fantham, ‘Rhetoric and Ovid’s Poetry’ in A Companion to Ovid, ed. P. E. Knox (n. 4 above), p. 26.

  53. For full analyses of this passage see Metamorfosi Vol. 1, ed. A. Barchiesi (n. 35 above); Metamorphoses I-IV, ed. D. E. Hill (n. 35 above); Bass considers it significant that this speech is positioned at the centre of the Phaethon episode: R. C. Bass, ‘Some Aspects of the Structure of the Phaethon Episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 27, No. 2, 1977, pp. 402–8.

  54. qui fera terribili iaculatur fulmina dextra, ‘he who hurls wild thunderbolts with his fearful right hand’. Note too the juxtaposition of fera and terribili.

  55. Elsewhere in the ‘Twelve Symphonies’ Dittersdorf similarly uses a style suggestive of vocal music, often to create a heightened sense of pathos, for example in Andromeda’s lament (Persée iii) and the song of the innocent Lampetides (Phinée iii), which is highly reminiscent of Haydn’s Sitio movement in the characteristic work Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross, composed around the same time as Dittersdorf’s ‘Twelve Symphonies’.

  56. Binary Form was essentially a Baroque structure, though Dittersdorf here uses the extended ‘Rounded Binary’ type that evolved later, meaning that the ‘B’ section ends with a shortened reprise of the ‘A’ section: C. Rosen, Sonata forms (n. 15 above), p. 20 ff..

  57. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 170.

  58. e.g. C. P. E. Bach’s Sanguineus und Melancholicus H. 579. See R. Will, ‘When God Met the Sinner’, (n. 7 above), pp. 175–209.

  59. This symphony has been studied in detail by R. Will, Ibid. p. 186 ff..

  60. C. Rosen, Sonata forms (n. 14 above), p. 112; W. S. Newman, The sonata in the classic era (n. 15 above), p. 161 ff..

  61. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 171.

  62. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 172.

  63. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 169.

  64. The Minuet and Trio movement in Les Paysans is also similar in that there is clear contrast between the characters of Latona and the peasants, but the musical contrast, rather than being segregated in the Minuet and Trio respectively, is integrated throughout.

  65. With the exception of the fourth movement of Actéon, all the finales consist of two or three sections loosely joined.

  66. For full analyses see Metamorfosi Vol. 1, ed. A. Barchiesi (n. 37 above); Metamorphoses I–IV, ed. D. E. Hill (n. 37 above).

  67. R. Will, The Characteristic Symphony (n. 4 above), pp. 49 ff.. The equivalent technique in painting is described in Ovid Renewed, ed. C. Martindale (n. 4 above), p. 153 ff..

  68. F. Niecks, Programme Music (n. 17 above), p. 4. He considered emotional and symbolic representation to be more skillful. He also quotes Goethe’s words in a letter to Adalbert Schoepke dated 1818: “To imitate thunder in music is not art, but the musician who excites in me the feeling as if I heard thunder would be very estimable.” p. 529.

  69. My particular favourite from the ‘Twelve Symphonies’ comes in the fourth movement of Les Paysans when Dittersdorf replicates Ovid’s onomatopoeic croaking of the frogs (sub aqua sub aqua, 6.376), with leaps on the weak beats of the bar and tutti ‘croaking’ repeated notes at the bottom of each instrument’s range.

  70. C. Segal, ‘Narrative Art in the “Metamorphoses”’, The Classical Journal, Vol. 66, No. 4, 1971, pp. 331–7 convincingly argues that Ovid’s narrative pace in this tale is designed to “maintain epic elevation and help keep up suspense in a narrative that has a very simple plot and offers little in the way of direct human interest” (p. 335). In contrast see L. P. Wilkinson’s chapter on the Metamorphoses in his seminal work, Ovid Recalled, Cambridge: C. U. P., 1955.

  71. J. B. Solodow, The world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (n. 9 above), p. 102 ff..

  72. Hermes in Krebs (n. 27 above), p. 172.

  73. J. L. Buller, ‘Looking Backwards: Baroque Opera and the Ending of the Orpheus Myth’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1995, pp. 57–79

  74. F. W. Sternfeld, ‘Orpheus, Ovid and Opera’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 113, No. 2, 1998, pp. 172–202.

  75. For more on the interesting topic of Ovidian decline, a readable but dated starting point is R. H. Coon, ‘The Vogue of Ovid since the Renaissance’, The Classical Journal, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1930, pp. 277–90; H. Frankel, A Poet Between Two Worlds, Berkeley: California University Press, 1945, also offers a good introduction, as does L. P. Wilkinson Ovid Recalled (n. 70 above). For a discussion of decline in 17th-century England (contrasted with conflicting evidence from the continent), see R. F. Hardin ‘Ovid in Seventeenth-Century England’, (n. 32 above), pp. 50–66. For decline in the 19th-century see N. Vance ‘Ovid and the nineteenth century’ in Ovid Renewed, ed. C. Martindale (n. 4 above).

  76. See D. M. Poduska, ‘Classical Myth in Music: A Selective List’, The Classical World, Vol. 92, No. 3, 1999, pp. 195–276; F. W. Sternfeld, ‘Orpheus, Ovid and Opera’ (n. 74 above), especially pp. 172–8.

  77. Perraud argues that an awareness of music inspired by ancient texts is highly beneficial to students of Roman literature. He mentions students reading literature in translation, but I would extend this positive influence to all students and lovers of Roman literature, reading them either in the original or in translation. L. Perraud, ‘Integrating Art and Music with Roman Literature in Translation’, The Classical World, Vol. 79, No. 5, 1986, pp. 324–9.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephanie Oade.

Additional information

Stephanie Oade is a ‘cellist in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, a recent holder of the TBL Webster Award for Latin at Manchester University, and an independent scholar.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Oade, S. Poetry into Music: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Dittersdorf’s ‘Twelve Symphonies on Ovid’s Metamorphoses’ . Int class trad 21, 245–272 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-014-0343-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-014-0343-1

Keywords

Navigation