NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Six Metamorphoses after Ovid

English composer Benjamin Britten composed the program music Six Metamorphoses after Ovid (Op. 49) for solo Oboe in 1951. Intended to evoke images of the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, the piece is dedicated to oboist Joy Boughton, daughter of friend and contemporary composer Rutland Boughton who gave the first performance at the Aldeburgh Festival on 14 June 1951. Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH (November 22, 1913 Lowestoft, Suffolk - December 4, 1976 Aldeburgh, Suffolk) was a British composer, conductor, and pianist. ... Program music is music intended to evoke extra-musical ideas, images in the mind of the listener by musically representing a scene, image or mood [1]. By contrast, absolute music stands for itself and is intended to be appreciated without any particular reference to the outside world. ... The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. ... Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC â€“ Tomis, now ConstanÅ£a AD 17), a Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women and mythological transformations. ... // Cover of George Sandyss 1632 edition of Ovids Metamorphosis Englished The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world in terms according to Greek and Roman points of view. ... Rutland Boughton (1878-1960), a pupil of Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music in London, became well known in the early 20th century as a composer of orchestral and choral music. ...

1 Form
2 Description of Movements
3 See also

Form

As its title suggests, it is in six movements, each of which bears a superscription:

Pan, who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx, his beloved.
Phaeton, who rode upon the chariot of the sun for one day and was hurled into the river Padus by a thunderbolt.
Niobe, who, lamenting the death of her fourteen children, was turned into a mountain.
Bacchus, at whose feasts is heard the noise of gaggling women's tattling tongues and shouting out of boys.
Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image and became a flower.
Arethusa, who, flying from the love of Alpheus the river god, was turned into a fountain.

Most of the six movements are marked by frequent pauses between phrases, denoted either by breath mark or fermata. A typical performance lasts between 10 and 15 minutes. A breath mark A breath mark is a symbol used in musical notation. ... A fermata (or hold or pause) is an element of musical notation indicating that the note should be sustained for longer than its note value would indicate. ...

Description of Movements

I. Pan

In depicting its free-spirited, eponymous mythological figure, the first movement is marked Senza misura, or "without measure." This, combined with its frequent phrase-ending fermatas, gives the piece an ad libitum feel: Pan (Greek , genitive ) is the Greek god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music: paein means to pasture. ... Ad libitum is Latin for at ones pleasure, often shortened to Ad lib. ...