conductor until 1866, and afterwards under various conductors, Signor Arditi, M. Hervé, Mr. Arthur Sullivan, M. Riviere, etc.
PROMETHEUS. Beethoven's only Ballet (op. 43); designed by Salvatore Vigano; composed in 1800, and produced, for Mlle. Casentini's benefit, March 28, 1801, in the Burg-theater, Vienna, under the title of 'Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus.' It contains an overture, an 'Introduction,' and 16 numbers. The title of the first edition, an arrangement for the piano (Vienna, 1801, numbered in error op. 24), is 'Gli Uomini Prometeo'; English edition, 'The men of Prometheus.' If Boyle—who under the name of Bombet wrote the famous letters on Haydn—may be trusted, the representation of Chaos from the 'Creation' was interpolated by Vigano into Beethoven's Ballet at Milan, to express 'the first dawn of sentiment in the mind of beauty' (whatever that may mean).[1]
No. 5 is a very early instance of the use of Harp with the Orchestra.—The Introduction contains a partial anticipation of the Storm in Pastoral Symphony.—The Finale contains two tunes which Beethoven has used elsewhere; first of these, in E♭, appears as a Contretanz, No. 7 of 12; as the theme of 15 variations a fugue for the PF. in E♭ (op. 35, composed 1802); and as the principal theme in the Finale to the Eroica Symphony. The second—in G—appears as a Contretanz, No. 11 of the first mentioned. Such repetitions are rare in Beethoven.—The autograph of Prometheus has disappeared, but the Hofbibliothek at Vienna possesses a transcript with Beethoven's corrections.
PROPHÈTE, LE. Opera in 5 acts; words by Scribe, music by Meyerbeer. Produced at the Opéra, Paris, April 16, 1849. In Italian, in 4 acts, at Covent Garden, July 24, 1849.
PROPORTION (Lat. Proportio; Ital. Proporzione). A term used in Arithmetic to express certain harmonious relations existing between the several elements of a series of numbers; and transferred from the terminology of Mathematics to that of Music, in which it plays a very prominent part. In Music, however, the word is not always employed in its strict mathematical sense: for, a true Proportion can only exist in the presence of three terms; in which point it differs from the Ratio, which is naturally expressed by two. Now, the so-called 'Proportions' of Musical Science are almost always expressible by two terms only, and should therefore be more correctly called Ratios; but we shall find it convenient to assume, that, in musical phraseology, the two words may be lawfully treated as synonymous—as, in fact, they actually have been treated, by almost all who have written on the subject, from Joannes Tinctor, who published the first Musical Dictionary, in the year 1474,[2] to the Theorists of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Of the three principal kinds of Proportion known to Mathematicians, two only—the Arithmetical and Geometrical species—are extensively used in Music: the former in connection with differences of Pitch and Rhythm; the latter, in the construction of the Time-table, the Scale of Organ Pipes, and other matters of importance.
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[App. p.752 "in the diagram, above the figure 8 in the top row of figures, the sign should be a semicircle, not a circle. The note below the sign is correct."]
Thomas Morley, in his 'Plaine and easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke' (London 1597), gives a Table, which exhibits, at one view, all the different kinds of Proportion then iu general use; thereby saving so much time and trouble, in the way of reference, that we have thought it well to
