Fate in music

[relm1]

Many great works have elements of "fate knocking at the door" and I was trying to discuss this with someone and realized I wasn't quite sure what it meant. 
Some examples:
* Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, the "fate knocking at the door" motif that interrupts throughout.
* Mahler Symphony No. 5 (opening trumpet)
* Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 (fanfare)
* Schoenberg, Pelleas und Melisande (fate motif that dooms the lovers)
* Wagner's Ring (I'm sure there is a fate motif, I just don't remember what it is)
* Some could argue DSCH in Shostakovich's music
* Some could argue the opening motif of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1 (aka danger motif)
etc

So what exactly does the fate motif mean?  My opinion is this is more like a fate idea from the Greek tragedies.  For instance, a sense of a greater force that fulfills a preordained destiny in which we (or the characters) are simply participants.  For example, with Oedipus, their attempts to subvert destiny results in the fulfillment of the destiny.  They are powerless regardless of the effort to avoid their fate.

[vandermolen]

A sense of looming disaster perhaps?
Schulhoff: Symphony 5
Definitely Rachmaninov Symphony 1 'Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord' and Tchaikovsky No.4 (and No. 6?)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony 9
Bax: Symphony 2
Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini.

[Jo498]

Carmen: at the beginning, five notes followed by ominous bass pizzicato
Mahler 6: both a certain rhythm and a minor-major chord progression, already very prominent in the first movement
Tchaikovsky 5: opening returns in later movement and is transformed to a hymn-like tune in the major at the beginning of the finale
maybe Schubert Unfinished: beginning in the bass

[Spineur]

- Orphée & Eurydice represent the fate of mankind.   Some argue that it inspired the death an resurrection of christ in christian religion.  Anyway, this myth makes a fabulous libretto, and has inspired a number of composers.

[some guy]

Collapsing the immense variety and intricacies of music into a few vague and imprecise generalities doesn't seem quite the thing for a forum of music fans.

Theoretically. (Logically.)

Practically, it often seems like it is the ONLY thing for a forum of music fans.

I know this has been asked before, and has unleashed firestorms of vitriol*, but really, does anyone listen to the music itself? That is, does anyone listen to music without translating all the different things that happen in each piece, unique to each piece, into a few simple words about our emotions or about some concepts, words that aren't even good--by virtue of their appalling lack of specificity--at expressing the emotions or the concepts?

*but then, as we know, practically anything about music can unleash firestorms of vitriol. That also seems like a thing.

[Jo498]

You are attacking a straw man. Do you really believe that most people listen to e.g. Beethoven's 5th or Tchaikovsky's 4th and think all the time: Fate knocking at the door, fate, fate, etc. or speculate whatever it might mean from the composer's biography or so?
This would obviously be missing the point but I am fairly certain that almost nobody who might occasionally call the piece "fate symphony" (I never do) listens in that fashion.

Nevertheless, IIRC Tchaikovsky himself did call that fanfare from the 4th "fatum" and it can still be interesting what kind of music is used to express ominous or fatalist emotions. But this does not imply that for those who find such stuff interesting it would *exhaust* the aesthetic experience. Obviously it does not.

[Florestan]

does anyone listen to the music itself?

Die Musik an sich???  Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie... 

That is, does anyone listen to music without translating all the different things that happen in each piece, unique to each piece, into a few simple words about our emotions or about some concepts, words that aren't even good--by virtue of their appalling lack of specificity--at expressing the emotions or the concepts?

Die Musik für mich!!! ...Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

[ritter]

Verdi's La  Forza del Destino, with its fate motive that appears at the start of the overture. ...

[relm1]

Verdi's La  Forza del Destino, with its fate motive that appears at the start of the overture. ...

Right, that's a good one. 

[relm1]

A sense of looming disaster perhaps?
Schulhoff: Symphony 5
Definitely Rachmaninov Symphony 1 'Vengeance I'd mine sayeth the Lord' and Tchaikovsky No.4 (and No. 6?)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony 9
Bax: Symphony 2
Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini.

Would the Mahler 6 hammer blows count as a "fate" motif or is it possible a sense of looming disaster and fate motif are not necessarily the same?

[Spineur]

What would Rigoletto be without the curse of count Ceprano in the opening scene ?  Why does Rigoletto invoque "La malediction !" as he find his daughter "Gilda" in the bag which was suppose to hold the count ?   Fate is there from the first minute to the tragic and fatal end, and Verdi knows perfectly how to use it to manipulate our sentiments.  This is the magic of opera which is about theatre and music.

[vandermolen]

Would the Mahler 6 hammer blows count as a "fate" motif or is it possible a sense of looming disaster and fate motif are not necessarily the same?

Good question. In my world view they are inextricably linked - but maybe that's a comment on me.   

[Jo498]

The hammer blows symbolize probably something but they are not enough of a motive and come too late in the piece to serve as some kind of pervading motive. I cannot be more specific right now but there is such a pervading motive in Mahler 6 as I said above. It is a certain harmonic progression (basically two chords) and a rhythm (often in the timpani, something like taam - taam - tata - taam)

[some guy]

The hammer blows symbolize probably something

Probably something, eh? Could you be more precise?

Maybe they symbolize me beating my head against the wall. Yeah, that could work.

pervading motive.

It's the only kind there is.

[Florestan]

me beating my head against the wall.

Harder, harder, harder! Yet harder! Harder still!

[Jo498]

My point was that the hammer blows are not musical motives.
The other one I mentioned is a musical motive. It is structurally important but it is also fairly likely that it has some connotation. Of course I cannot more precise. This is again the straw man. Nobody who thinks that music has "meaning" thinks that it has a unique and easily translatable extra-musical meaning. Because then there would not be any need for composing music.
But the alternative is not a purely structural view.  (The structural view is a completely independent approach. It does not refute semantical meaning, it is simply silent about it.)

When Beethoven wrote about his pastoral symphony "more expression of feeling than painting" (mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei) he was rejecting crude tone painting but at the same time confirming some tone painting as one aspect (otherwise "more...than" would not make sense) and it would be ridiculous to deny tone painting in face of the bird calls and the thunderstorm. And he was explicitly confirming "expression of feeling"

[jochanaan]

We are dealing with a completely different mindset when we deal with the Romantic in music.  The Romantics were in fact always "reading things into scores."  Brahms' symphonies 1, 3, and 4, for example, were known in his lifetime as the "Heroic," "Romantic" and "Tragic" symphonies; even though Brahms himself gave them no such titles, his friends Hans von Bulow and Clara Schumann did, and sketched out programs too.

The two main founders of the 20th-century "objective" viewpoint were Arturo Toscanini and Igor Stravinsky, who each in their own way rejected the Romantic penchant to read things into music.  Toscanini famously said about Beethoven's Third Symphony: "Some say this is Napoleon, some say Hitler, some say Mussolini.  For me it is simply allegro con brio."