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【單曲欣賞】韋伯/柏遼茲:邀舞
Invitation to the Dance (Aufforderung zum Tanz), Op. 65, J. 260, is a piano piece in rondo form written by Carl Maria von Weber in 1819. It is also well known in the 1841 orchestration by Hector Berlioz.
The piece tells the story of a couple at a ball, starting with a young man politely asking a girl for a dance; they take several turns around the room; and they part politely.
Weber gave his wife and dedicatee the following program:
Bars 1-5: first appearance of the dances
Bars 5-9: the lady’s evasive reply
Bars 9-13: his pressing invitation
Bars 13-16: her consent
Bars 17-19: he begins conversation
Bars 19-21: her reply
Bars 21-23: speaks with greater warmth
Bars 23-25: the sympathetic agreement
Bars 25-27: addresses her with regard to the dance
Bars 27-29: her answer
Bars 29-31: they take their places
Bars 31-35: waiting for the commencement of the dance.
The dance
The conclusion of the dance, his thanks, her reply, and their retirement.
In 1841, Hector Berlioz was asked to contribute to a production of Weber's opera Der Freischütz at the Paris Opera. It was the practice in France at that time that operas contain a ballet in Act II, which were not always by the same composer but often interpolations by other hands. Berlioz was a great admirer of Weber's, having been disappointed more than once in his quest to meet him, and referring repeatedly in his Treatise on Instrumentation to Weber's works. He agreed to participate, on condition that the opera be performed complete and unadapted (it had been cut and retitled "Robin des bois" for an Odéon production in the 1820s), and that it contain music only by Weber. For the ballet, he orchestrated the piano score of Invitation to the Dance, transposing it from D-flat major to D major, being a more orchestrally manageable key and also producing a brighter sound. He called the ballet L'Invitation à la valse; as a result, the original piano work is sometimes referred to in English as "Invitation to the Waltz", but that is not its correct title.
This production of the opera was first heard on 7 June 1841, but Berlioz's orchestration immediately took on a life of its own, separate from the opera for which it was intended. Berlioz himself frequently conducted his orchestration of Invitation to the Dance in concert. The instrumentation was similar to that which he employed in the "Un bal" movement of his Symphonie fantastique. It was first heard in the USA in 1856, in Boston. By contrast, Weber's original piano rondo was not performed at Carnegie Hall until 1898, by Moriz Rosenthal.
Despite the popularity of the Berlioz arrangement, in 1873 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky described its use in Der Freischütz as "utterly incongruous", "tasteless" and "silly". In 1879 he again criticised the practice, having attended a performance of the opera in Paris in which Gabrielle Krauss sang Agatha. He wrote:
"Der Freischütz afforded me great pleasure; in many places in the first act my eyes were moist with tears. In the second act Krauss pleased me greatly by her wonderful rendition of Agathe's aria. The Wolf's Glen was staged not at all as splendidly as I had expected. The third act was curious because of the French brazenness with which they took the liberty, on the one hand, of inserting Invitation à la valse with the most stupid dances, and, on the other, of cutting out the role of the hermit who appears at the end for the dénouement".
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