The 18th Century Symphony

Abstract

The six Ovid Symphonies (or "Sinfonias") by part-time Forest-Warden, raconteur, Court Official and Kapellmeister Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-99) are much the best known of the many symphonies written by this prolific and gifted contemporary of Mozart. They survive in their original manuscript form, and in their overall representative content, each may be said to typify the Rococo-Enlightenment period's unending fascination with the restitution of Classical and mythological subject matter, as reflected in countless musical compositions of the period.

Ovid's Metamorphoses, a 15-volume survey of Greek and Roman legend, offer a loosely episodic framework in which events in the narrative are often rather tenuously linked. Ovid began, logically enough, with a representation of primeval chaos, but Dittersdorf chose to begin his symphonic retrospective with a symphony designed to portray the Four Ages of the World - Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron. The orchestra is the familiar Classical one - single flute, and pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, with strings and timpani.

The opening movement (Larghetto) employs a tranquil, nobly sculpted theme to represent an age of high culture and moralistic adherence ("Aurea prima sata est aetas"), in which strings and winds alternate in presentation of the material. A second subject affords some variety, though the movement is basically monothematic. The second movement (the Silver Age - "Subiit argentea proles auro deterior"), a brilliant Allegro e vivace, is set in three-part sonata form. The main theme is bracing and punctuated with heraldic trumpet fanfares, suggesting perhaps that this was an epoch of heroic endeavor and advancement.

There follows the expected Minuet movement (by now of course a mandatory inclusion in any Classical symphony), though this one is terse and angular in character, as befits a Bronze-Age people ("Tertia post illas successit aënea proles") who were altogether more brutish and warlike than their ancestors. Here, the dotted rhythms, severe counterpoint, and minor key of the outer sections (which frame a more relaxed central Trio) recall the acerbic, insistent style of the French Ouverture.

Dittersdorf's brief history of time ends with "de duro est ultima ferro" - The Age of Iron. The ominously chromatic descending bass-line at the start, and the wild, agitated string figurations show just how much the music relied on the frenetic Sturm und Drang influence of early Classicism, but the alarming drum-taps and trumpet-salvoes are a vivid example of Dittersdorf's frequently criticized dramatic-pictorial style at its most extreme.

Still, it should be remembered that this was intended to represent nothing less than an age of total licentiousness, when every moral instinct had been destroyed by mankind's wantonness and fury. And even when, during the final sections of the work, the music appears to attain a more settled mood (Allegretto), there remains a sting in the tail! Dittersdorf ensures that this most dramatic of early programme symphonies ends with a final violent descent into an abyss that few of his contemporaries can have contemplated at the time.

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