Music contest between Pan and Apollo
The music contest between Pan and Apollo is a motif from Greek mythology , which in the Latin version of Ovid ( Metamorphoses 11, 150–193) has been effective in European art and cultural history since the Renaissance .
Vorovidian certificates
The musical challenge that the goat-legged shepherd god Pan with the syrinx directs to Phoebus-Apollo with the kithara has a parallel in the musical challenge of the satyr Marsyas with the aulos to the same god, which is also mentioned in Ovid's Metamorphoses, with a focus on the description of the gruesome punishment (6, 382–400). The Marsyas myth is probably a forerunner of the Pan version, at any rate elements from both were later mixed, as in Hyginus ( Fabulae 191). If in the Marsyas myth the skinning of the challenger was originally less a “punishment” than a mythical etiology for the invention of the bagpipe - a cultural advance - the dog-ears of Midas testify to an archaic donkey cult - there are also donkey-eared depictions of the “radiant” Apollo - and were only later interpreted as having wrong hearing. The contrast between musical primitiveness (Pan) and refined high culture (Apollo), which has become effective in the West, is a relatively recent interpretation of the myth, which, however, is obviously already assumed by Ovid.
The scene at Ovid
Ovid relates the story as a further example of the folly of King Midas, who was previously ruined by the wish that everything he touched should turn into gold, and who is now in the woods and grottos of Pan. The scene begins with a description of the Tmolos mountain range in Lydia . Against this backdrop, Pan plays the nymphs on his Syrinx and prides himself on making music more beautifully than Apollo. He appeals to Tmolos , the god of the mountain, to pass judgment. This clears his ears from trees and declares himself ready. Pan plays his multi-pipe flute and finds Midas' pleasure. Then Tmolos turns to Phoebus-Apollo, who, curly blond, clad in purple and wreathed with laurel, is performing his audition on the kithara in an artist pose. Tmolos delightedly declares him the winner. Everyone around applauds. Only Midas protests. Thereupon Apollo gives the ears the donkey shape appropriate to their folly, vividly described by Ovid. Midas shamefully covers her with a red cap. His hair clipper, however, notices the secret, and since he cannot keep it to himself, he whispers it into a hole in the ground, from where the sprouting stalks spread it to all winds.
Arrangements in theater, music and visual arts
- The dispute between Phoebus and Pan , cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach
- The judgment of Midas , comedy by Christoph Martin Wieland
- King Midas , opera by Wilhelm Kempff
literature
- Ernst Kuhnert : Midas . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Col. 2957 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Martin Vogel : The hose of Marsyas (PDF; 4.8 MB). In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie Neue Reihe, Volume 107, 1964, pp. 34–56.
Web links
- Book XI of the Metamorphoses of Ovid (Latin and German)