Monday 9 November 2015

The Oratorio to End All Oratorios

Around the turn of the twentieth century, music reached a crisis point.  The increasing size and complexity of the Romantic musical language and orchestra were arriving at a state of tonal congestion.  Numerous composers undertook many different experiments to try to cut through the chromatic web of post-Wagnerian music, or to start over again on a totally different track.  But there were some composers who kept working in the style of the post-Romantic era, and who continued to produce significant and moving musical works in that style.

One was Franz Schmidt.  Musically conservative by nature, he composed two major masterworks in the final years of his life which can stand comparison with the greatest earlier achievements of musical history.  The first was his Fourth Symphony, composed in 1933 (read about it here: Sorrowful Beauty Part 1 ).  The second, completed four years later, was his monumental oratorio Das Buch Mit Sieben Siegeln ("The Book With Seven Seals"), a setting of a large portion of the Book of Revelation which concludes the Bible.  This work, so enormous in its emotional range and musical complexity, effectively puts an emphatic period to the tradition of the large Romantic oratorio form. 

The Revelation of St. John is unique in the Scriptures: an extended prophecy of the end of time and the coming of the Kingdom of God couched in language which is by turns vivid, metaphoric, poetic, laconic, prosaic or ecstatic.  The sheer range of style in the text is itself a huge challenge to musical setting.  So is the total length of the book which -- although divided in chapters for ease in reading -- is a coherent whole, flowing from beginning to end in a single mighty current.

Other composers, including Handel, Brahms, and Vaughan Williams had set portions of the Revelation to music.  But none before Schmidt had attempted a comprehensive setting, and perhaps it's just as well.  Franz Schmidt was uniquely fitted, by belief, temperament, and position in musical history, to undertake this monumental task.

The result, premiered in Vienna in 1938 to great acclaim, is a musical experience of unprecedented power, beauty, terror, and magnificence.  Schmidt's final masterwork doesn't just narrate the events contained in Revelation; it evokes vividly the emotional reactions of suffering humanity to the horrors which are sometimes described so briefly in the Biblical text and contrasts these with the triumphant jubilation of the souls of the righteous.  All this is conveyed with the broadest palette of vocal and orchestral sound, yet all contained within a strongly classical framework in which symmetrical structure and fugal writing play a critical role.  Perhaps never since Bach's B Minor Mass has there been a single work which has so thoroughly summarized and exemplified the choral and vocal art of its time.

The entire Book of Revelation is told in the words of St. John, so he naturally becomes the narrator of the oratorio.  Schmidt traditionally uses a tenor voice for this role, but most untraditionally calls for a dramatic Heldentenor in the Wagnerian mode.  This allows for the widest range of orchestral sound to be used to underline the narrations.

For maximum contrast, the Voice of God (heard in extended arias at three key points in the work) is given to a basso cantante, a deep lyrical bass voice.  Besides these two singers, there is a further quartet of soloists who have short independent roles in the first part, as well as singing to provide contrast from the full choir.  A large Romantic orchestra is called for, and there is a sizable independent part for the organ.  The work lasts for nearly two hours.

I wish I had space to give a step-by-step account of all of this monumental work.  I'll have to settle for a few highlights.  The Prologue begins with John's introduction, followed by the first of the three solos for the Voice of God, and then the description of the Lamb being found worthy to open the Book which is in the hand of God.

The proper first part begins with a granitic organ solo, and then moves to the description of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Here, the arrival of the Red Horseman is the sign for war to be let loose on the land.  To a relentless galloping rhythm the men's chorus sing fiercely of how they will kill, burn and destroy everything in their path while the women plead vainly for mercy for themselves and their children.  These and other additional texts bring a very human dimension to the story of the destruction of the world, making it far more terrifying than the brief descriptions in the Scripture.  By the way, the authorship of these additional texts -- whether by the composer or someone else -- is not known.

The Black Horseman of Hunger is followed by a tragic duet of a mother and daughter dying of hunger, short but poignant and heartfelt.  Then comes the Pale Horseman, with Death riding on him, and we now hear a duet between two soldiers on the field of carnage.  Schmidt clothes their broken dialogue with a sparse, almost spooky orchestration which in its lifeless air anticipates the final duet of Britten's War Requiem -- also sung by two soldiers meeting after a deadly battle.

The first part ends with the breaking of the sixth seal on the book, and the catastrophic earthquake, flood, fire, and rain of falling stars.  This chorus is probably the most fiendish fugue ever written for voices.  Schmidt uses all the classical devices of inverting and reversing the fugue subject, which is already full of jagged rhythms and unexpected harmonic leaps.  Pity the poor singers!  This gigantic chorus of fear and horror eventually works up to a terrible cry of despair which then dies away until a final huge staccato chord from the orchestra concludes the first part.

The lengthy organ solo opening Part Two uses the themes of that hair-raising fugue to great effect, rising to a climax built on the same chords as were sung by the choir.  After it dies away, St. John enters for a lengthy narration broken into several sections.  It's a challenging piece for the tenor, since it is in effect a twelve-minute aria with the singer often at full stretch, high up in his range, over very heavy orchestral writing.

The seven trumpets of the Apocalypse now sound.  We've heard this before, of course.  Handel, Berlioz, Verdi, Dvorak, and Mahler all composed effective musical descriptions of the Last Trumpet!  However, the word used in the German Bible is Posaune which is today the modern German name for the trombone, and Schmidt's buildup makes much more use of these deeper instruments, playing very quietly.  These final disasters which now fall upon the world are described one by one, first by the alto, then joined by various other soloists until the whole quartet is singing.  From the fifth trumpet onwards, the chorus joins in a mighty quadruple fugue -- on four different themes -- and as far as I know this is the only comparable example in the whole of choral literature.  This massive structure roars onwards to a terrifying climax with screaming trumpets and reverberating tam-tams capping the last notes.

We now come to the final great aria for the Voice of God, an unprecedented outpouring of beautiful and consoling melody after so much terror and suffering.  The souls of the righteous then sing a majestic Hallelujah chorus, which with its rising sequences and accelerating phrases will make you forget for the moment all about Handel.  Without striving after any overt "descriptiveness", it still conveys a most vivid picture of the redeemed souls mounting up to heaven.  And then, after a short quietly chanted epilogue by the men's choir, John gives his concluding address to the same music with which he began, and the choir joins in a single mighty Amen to bring the work to its end.

Fifteen years ago I was privileged to be in the audience in Toronto for the Canadian premiere of this massive work.  It was an unforgettable experience. 

As with the Fourth Symphony, so too with Das Buch Mit Sieben Siegeln.  The easiest way to hear these two marvellous pieces is to live in Vienna, Schmidt's home city, where both works are acknowledged masterpieces and performed regularly.  Anywhere else, it's the luck of the draw if you happen to catch one of the much rarer live concerts of either work.

The recording to go for, if you can get it, is the EMI recording under the direction of Franz Welser-Most, simply because it was the first-ever recording to follow Schmidt's wishes and use a Heldentenor -- Stig Andersen in superb voice -- rather than a lighter-toned lyric tenor for the critical role of St. John.  Rene Pape as the Voice of God is equally good.  The superb performance by choir and orchestra in hair-raising digital sound also makes this version indispensable.