4 - Six Metamorphoses after Ovid and the Influence of Classical Mythology on Benjamin Britten

Summary

On 14 June 1951 at 4.30 pm a concert was performed on The Meare at Thorpeness in Suffolk by the Cambridge University Madrigal Society under the direction of Boris Ord. The concert included a selection of English madrigals, Jacobean part-songs and 20th-century music, including the first performance of Benjamin Britten's Six Metamorphoses after Ovid (1951), op. 49, for solo oboe, played by Joy Boughton. From this relatively informal première the Metamorphoses quickly became established as one of the most important pieces in the oboe repertoire, offering the player a wonderful range of expressive and technical opportunities. The work is a suite of miniature portraits mainly in ternary form, which paint the characters and metamorphic stories of six immortals from Ovid's great poem, the Metamorphoses.

Described at the time as ‘a real open-air piece written by way of relaxation during the creation of Billy Budd’, the Metamorphoses might appear on first acquaintance to be an inconsequential item in the composer's output. However, Britten's choice of Ovid as his muse is significant. The Metamorphoses is illustrative of an overarching theme that had an important but hitherto largely unrecognized effect on the composer. Britten's interest in classical mythology was encouraged by some key influences, including the novelists Hermann Melville and E. M. Forster, the poet W. H. Auden and Britten's lifelong companion Peter Pears. This absorption reached its peak in the late 1940s and early 1950s after the composition of The Rape of Lucretia (1946) and culminated in the creation of Billy Budd (1951) and the Metamorphoses. I will suggest that Britten's interest was more than passing, and indeed bears comparison to the importance in his repertoire of the Christian tradition.

I shall also consider the significance of the instrumentation of this piece. The choice of unaccompanied oboe to illustrate Ovid's texts may reflect a view that the work concerns the individual, or the responsibility of individual moral choice. Yet the use of the oboe also draws attention to its classical associations, particularly with Bacchus, and thus is an aesthetic and symbolic contrast to Apollo's lyre.

To use Ovid's Metamorphoses as inspiration for a solo instrumental work is original, and is evidence of the very particular approach the composer had towards his chosen texts throughout his career.