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  • Prometheus in Music: Representations of the Myth in the Romantic Era
  • Richard Giarusso
Prometheus in Music: Representations of the Myth in the Romantic Era. By Paul Bertagnolli. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. [xv, 369 p. ISBN-13: 9780754654681. $99.95.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliographical references, index.

Of the many mythical subjects that inspired artists throughout the nineteenth century, few had as wide-ranging an influence as the Prometheus legend—the story of the defiant Titan, who, having stolen the gift of fire from Olympus, was chained by Zeus to a rock, where an eagle fed upon his liver. In spite of his isolation and physical suffering, Prometheus never repented. Finally freed by Hercules, he was hailed as a savior whose audacious theft had served to provide both literal and metaphorical "enlightenment" to mankind. While treatments of the Prometheus legend abound throughout the centuries, aspects of the story were especially appealing to artists of the romantic era.

As Paul Bertagnolli explains in his new volume from Ashgate, the identity of Prometheus as both "rebel and liberator" spoke powerfully to artists working in the shadow of the revolutions and national movements that reshaped the European continent during the nineteenth century. Futhermore, Bertagnolli suggests that the image of Prometheus as an "outcast" destined to a life of suffering at the hands of an uncomprehending public resonated strongly with the era's emergent understanding of the lot of artists—willing exiles from society who nonetheless felt the emotional pain of their isolation. But, within the framework of these two general viewpoints, treatments of the myth in nineteenth-century music offered compelling and often radical commentaries on issues of political, social, religious, and aesthetic significance. Bertagnolli's examination of Prometheus music considers not only canonical works by Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, and Wolf, but also lesser-known contributions by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Augusta Holmès, Hubert Parry, Karl Goldmark, and Wolfram Bargiel, among others. Bertagnolli's volume is not simply an account of "great" composers and "great" works, but a treatment of the far-reaching impact and varied application of a single mythical topic in nineteenth-century European musical life.

Throughout the volume, Bertagnolli pairs detailed musical analyses with creative and often compelling interpretive approaches tailored to each individual work. Among the most successful of the chapters are those dealing with Prometheus music of Beethoven and Liszt. In the Beethoven chapter, Bertagnolli considers the social implications of the popular dance types chosen by the composer for inclusion within his ballet score. For instance, the use of a simple English contredanse at the moment when Prometheus invites his "creatures" to take their first steps suggests a certain "egalitarian" impulse within Beethoven's treatment of the myth (p. 48). Bertagnolli also answers the criticism that much of Beethoven's music for the score was "too learned" for the genre of ballet. In accordance with the emergence of the ballet d'action, in which a coherent plot was to be related through dance, Bertagnolli suggests that Beethoven purposely departed from more "formulaic structures for dance music" in order to coordinate musical details (strange harmonic shifts, elements of sonata form, etc.) with stage actions and body motions (p. 90). His claims here are supported by a careful examination of the sketches for the score and the scenario for the ballet.

Liszt's Prometheus music, the subject of Bertagnolli's dissertation ("From Overture to Symphonic Poem, from Melodrama to Choral Cantata: Studies of the Sources for Franz Liszt's Prometheus and his Chöre zu Herder's 'Entfesseltem Prometheus' " [Ph.D. diss., Washington University, St. Louis, 1998]) is the topic of the strongest and most tightly organized chapter. Considering both Liszt's tone poem and the earlier choruses written as incidental music for an 1850 performance of Herder's Der entfesselte Prometheus, Bertagnolli examines the relationship between Liszt's treatment of the Prometheus story and the doctrine [End Page 304] of Humanität central to Herder's philosophy of history. According to Bertag nolli, Herder's Prometheus turns the legend away from the story of "antiquity's gods" towards an account of "specifically human virtues," highlighting a kind of universal "humanity" that transcends national boundaries (pp. 184 and 187). Bertag...

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