From The Archives 10: Orfeo and the Power of Music

While I'm not particularly a fan of opera, opera is cool in the musicologically and culturally because of the way it combines music and story in performance. This was another essay for my Western Art Music Tradition class.

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December 2016

Monteverdi’s Orfeo represents the power of music on multiple levels. La musica introduces the story, framing Orfeo’s tragedy within the context of song, and follows him as he attempts to win back Eurydice from the underworld. Orfeo himself is known for his music and using his music as power in order to achieve success, or attempt to achieve success. At the time that this opera was written, opera was a new art form, showing that Monteverdi’s Orfeo is a demonstration of how music is powerful within stories and within the changing technologies of music.

La musica, and her introduction to the opera are unique to Monteverdi’s rendition of the Orpheus myth. She begins by discussing her position as Music and the power she has over the emotions that can come out of music to affect others. Orfeo himself is not even mentioned until her forth stanza of, and after the one stanza dedicated to him, she finishes by setting the musical stage and asking for extra sounds to be quieted.[1] La musica’s introduction shows more that she herself is more significant to the production, even more so than Orfeo’s story, and that Orfeo’s story is important because of the music within it.  

When Orfeo meets Eurydice, she doesn’t pay attention to him. It is only after weeks of hearing his music being played for her that she comes to fall in love with him. Orfeo’s music had the power to be able to win Eurydice’s love in the first place, setting this story on its musically inclined path. After their wedding, Orfeo sings about how sad and terrible his life was before Eurydice and that she is the one giving him happiness when he gets the news that she is dead.[2] The entrance of the messenger of Eurydice’s death is marked musically by a high e. The high e and the harmonic structure of the music that follows swiftly change the mood from joyful to sorrowful. Monteverdi masterfully leads up to this e entrance by having four other pieces start on e because this particular one.[3] Even with the foreshadowing, the note creates a powerful punch to the opera that could perhaps even surprise a few operagoers in their seats. This change of mood and structure creates a great pause to which Orfeo cannot create music immediately after, as if Eurydice’s death has momentarily stolen his music from him.[4]

Once Orfeo begins his journey to get his Eurydice back, he comes across Charon at the entrance of the underworld. As a living being, Orfeo knows that trying to get into the underworld is not going to be easy. He sings a dramatic flourishing song for Charon, filled with flattery, in an attempt to convince him to allow him through. This does not work. Desperate, Orfeo switches tactics and sings to his desperation and pain, begging Charon to take pity on him and allow him passage. This doesn’t work as expected, but the verity to his music was powerful enough to put Charon to sleep and allow him in this way to be able to get into the underworld.[5] Even though he had believed that an elaborately artistic piece dedicated towards his subject would be the best tactic, he found that true music is always the most powerful music, and even if music affects one in unexpected ways, it is still the best use of music. 

However, it wasn’t a sleepiness transferred onto Charon by the music that caused his sleep. Orfeo’s music actually reached Proserpina, Hades’s wife, and she was so moved by his music that while Orfeo’s eyes were closed that she has la musica use her power to put Charon to sleep. She also convinces her husband Hades to release Eurydice for Orfeo’s arrival and allow him to take her back to the surface.[6] Orfeo’s honest song not only gained him passage into the underworld, but also gave him exactly what his goal was- his beloved wife back. This piece, Possente Spirto, is unique because it has an echo-like action happening in the instrumentation of the piece. The instruments fill in within Orpheus’s singing and expand into the void of the Underworld, creating an even more dramatic effect.[7] Perhaps the echoing was what allowed it to reach far enough to be heard by Proserpina. 

One thing that Orpheus mentions of his wife is that of her glittering eyes that he fell in love with. When she is gone, he wishes to see them again. And when he is leading her out, because she is still a ghost, she makes no sound, and as per his rule, he cannot turn back to look at her.[8] Impatiently, he ends up looking back, which causes his to lose her again, but it is possible that his reliance on his eyes rather than just believing in the power of music was what caused his downfall. This is an intriguing change of focus because most everything has been focused on music and hearing the music of Orfeo and la musica and using its power to achieve success. 

What is especially conflicting is that the god of love is known as a blind god, and Orphic love as a love that “does not require eyes.”[9] By all means, Orfeo should never have disobeyed the command to not turn around. Even though he couldn’t hear her behind him, he should have trusted in la musica and his own power of music to know that Eurydice would be joined with him again, and yet he had to look back and destroy the success that music was giving to him. It is lack of faith in the very thing that he dedicates his life to that brings his failure. This is a huge character flaw that shows Orfeo to not be as powerful and amazing as everyone seemed to think he was. He was persistent enough to win Eurydice’s heart with his music, and honest enough to sway Proserpina and Hades with his pleas, but not powerful enough to successfully achieve something against the laws of nature, and bring his wife back from the dead. 

While different versions of this opera differ towards the end, most have an Orpheus and Echo interaction. While Orpheus is lamenting the loss of his wife, Echo, the nymth condemned to only be able to repeat the last word of anything someone says, hears him and starts repeating back. He notices and requests that all of his lament and not just the ends be repeated. Of course, she can’t do that, but he asks it of her and dedicates the song and his lyre to his lost Eurydice.[10] He again relies on his abilities within music and shows that all of his being, and most importantly, his musical power and ability, are dedicated to Eurydice even though he has completely lost her. The Echo interaction was still a piece of ingenuity because opera itself is a new art being brought forth and even then, it calls for a kind of music technology that wouldn’t come for some time longer with the phonograph in the late 1800s.[11]

Monteverdi closes his opera with Apollo coming to his distraught son Orfeo and offering him immortality.[12] In the original 1607 score for the opera, it ended instead with Orfeo being murdered by the Bacchantes who were drunk on their love of wine and music, serving as a form of punishment for Orfeo trying to conquer death with music. The 1609 score was changed to be closer to the myth with Apollo.[13] As the god of music, Apollo’s introduction at the end serves as a reminder that as powerful as Orfeo can be as his son, nobody can conquer the gods and the ways of the world, and although you can get far, most humans have faults that’ll prevent them from being like gods unless a god chooses to give them immortality for their efforts. By accepting immortality, Orfeo dedicates himself to an existence dedicated to his music because truthful music is the only way to continue his dedication to Eurydice.

The birth of opera provided a new format for music that was technologically different then previous music performances. Orfeo, as one of the first operas, thematically set up opera to be a form of music dedicated to the power of music and celebrating it. It also brought up potential music technologies of the future within the structure of music of the past. La musica’s telling of Orfeo’s successes and failures showed that true music is the ultimate power, and that the gods of music should be respected, because in the end, they are the only ones who can truly master all that is music. Within a changing and growing musical landscape, Monteverdi’s Orfeo was an invention of music dedicated to and displaying the power of music.

Bibliography

Abbate, Carolyn. In Search of Opera. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Carter, Tim. "Singing Orfeo: On the Performers of Monteverdi's First Opera." Recercare11 (1999): 75-118. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41701301.

Chrissochoidis, Ilias. "An Emblem of Modern Music: Temporal Symmetry in the Prologue of L'Orfeo (1607)." Early Music 39, no. 4 (2011): 519-30. Accessed October 27, 2016. http://em.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/4/519.full.pdf html.

Levin, David J. Opera through Other Eyes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.

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[1]Chrissochoidis, 2011, p. 519.

[2]Levin, 1993, p. 149.

[3]Carter, 1999, p. 75.

[4]Levin, 1993, p. 149.

[5]Levin, 1993, p. 155-7.

[6]Levin, 1993, p. 158.

[7]Abbate, 2001, p. 20-21.

[8]Levin, 1993, p. 162.

[9]Levin, 1993, p. 164.

[10]Levin, 1993, p. 168-9.

[11]Levin, 1993, p. 171.

[12]Levin, 1993, p. 174.

[13]Carter, 1999, p. 79.