Music worth the pain

Apollo & Marsyas

In Book IV of his Metamorphoses, Ovid tells us the story of the satyr Marsyas:

"When whoever it was had finished relating the ruin of the men of Lycia, another storyteller remembered the satyr, Marsyas, whom Apollo, Latona’s son, had defeated, playing on the flute, that Tritonian Minerva invented. He had exacted punishment. Marsyas cried ‘Why do you peel me out of myself? ‘Aah! I repent’, he screamed in agony. ‘Aah! Music is not worth this pain!’ As he screams, the skin is flayed from the surface of his body, no part is untouched. Blood flows everywhere, the exposed sinews are visible, and the trembling veins quiver, without skin to hide them: you can number the internal organs, and the fibres of the lungs, clearly visible in his chest. The woodland gods, and the fauns of the countryside, wept, and his brother satyrs, Olympus his friend and pupil, still dear to him then, and the nymphs, and all who pastured their fleecy sheep and horned cattle on those mountains. The fertile soil was drenched, and the drenched earth caught the falling tears, and absorbed them into its deep veins. It formed a stream then, and sent it into the clear air. From there it ran within sloping banks, quickly, to the sea, the clearest river of Phrygia, taking Marsyas’s name." (trans. A. S. Kline)

The original instruments ensemble Marsyas Baroque have taken the name of the poor victim of this gruesome story: "This myth has never let go of us," they say in the liner booklet; they see the clear river named after the unfortunate satyr as a metaphor for the bounty of music, continuing to this day.

Marsyas Baroque is:

• Paula Pinn – Recorder, Baroque Bassoon
• María Carrasco Gil – Baroque Violin
• Konstanze Waidosch – Baroque Cello, Violoncello piccolo, Viola da Gamba
• Sara Johnson Huidobro – Cembalo, Organ

The group has assembled the story as Ovid told it, with excerpts from the text (read in German by Timur Işık), illustrated musically by baroque chamber music, excerpts from operas and cantatas with a Marsyas and Apollo theme, and arrangements of choral music. The music moves the story along: the Chaconne comique from Telemann's Die Satyrn in Arkadien (The Satyrs in Arcadia) depicts Marsyas's jaunty competition piece. Apollo answers with his lyre, in Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer’s stately Toccata Uranie. At this point we suspect things are about to go wrong, and perhaps Marsyas does as well. For though the competition continues, the mood starts to get seriously scary, as we hear in Telemann’s aria Die Glut des Zorns, das Feuer der Rache (The Glow of Anger, the Fire of Vengeance). Poor Marsyas!

For the flaying alive of Marsyas we leave the baroque period for Alessandra Bellino’s commissioned composition, Marsýas, which uses all the fiendish devices of the avant garde idiom of contemporary music to show his awful suffering. This is an outstanding example of program music. 

But at the end, we return to earlier music: an arrangement for chamber ensemble of Carlo Gesualdo’s Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (I die, alas, in my sorrow). This is heartbreaking music, and it's followed by laments for the dead satyr, lovely pieces by Marin Marais and Antonín Reichenauer. Finally, in an acknowledgement of "the clearest river of Phrygia, flowing to the sea", we have the healing and hopeful power of music, in an exquisite chamber arrangement of J. S. Bach’s chorale setting Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (Adorn Yourself, O Dear Soul).

The cover photo of Marsyas Baroque is by Sophia Hegewald.

The official trailer for this album, due to be released on November 6, 2026: