Happy New Year to all! To start 2016 off with a bang, I am presenting to you a masterpiece (and it is in my opinion no less than that) which has vanished due entirely to politics. Taken on its own terms, as music, it should never have dropped off the map at all.
My title is inspired partly by style, but also partly by content in this case. Handel composed several major works to celebrate victories in one or another of the ongoing string of European wars in his lifetime -- the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate and the spectacular Dettingen Te Deum being prime examples. Maybe I should write about them next!
In 1871, to celebrate the victory of the nascent Germany over France in what is now called the Franco-Prussian War, Brahms composed a cantata which he called Triumphlied. It sets words from the Bible, principally from the Book of Revelation, and definitely stands in the direct line of succession from Handel's 18th century victory hymns. Not only that, but the music itself has an energy and exuberance that one doesn't necessarily associate with Brahms, but which also invites comparison with the celebratory works of the older master.
Of course, the war which the Triumphlied celebrated is now seen as the direct forerunner of the two great World Wars of the twentieth century. It didn't help the music's cause at all when Brahms wrote into the score the words "...for he hath judged the great prostitute," under notes that would have carried those words perfectly (although he did not set the words to music). In this way he basically equated the sinful city of Babylon in the Book of Revelation with Paris. As a result, this has become the least heard and least recorded of the sequence of major works for choir and orchestra which Brahms composed throughout much of his life.
In the 1970s, the young Giuseppe Sinopoli conducted a series of recording sessions for Deutsche Grammophon of major choral works with orchestra by Brahms, and in the process gave the Triumphlied what I believe to be its first major label recording. It wasn't an easy recording to get in Canada. As an LP, it was only available at a very high price as a special-order import. But when the complete set was reissued on a 3-CD box, it became one of my first CD purchases. As soon as I opened that box, I immediately pulled out the Triumphlied, the one piece in the set which I had never heard before.
From the very first notes, this music engaged me totally. Right in those opening bars I was drawn into an exhilarating sound world which, with its fast-moving melodies, immediately reminded me of Handel's public and ceremonial music -- and the resemblance doubled when the choir entered after the minute-long instrumental introduction with a rousing chain of "Hallelujahs!". I've never lost that impression since.
The Triumphlied is divided into 3 movements, lasting in total for about 25 minutes. In contrast to the surging rhythms of the quicker first and last movements, the second one adopts a more moderate tempo, but make no mistake -- there's no slackening of the essential energy of the work, such as one encounters in (for instance) the slow sections of Bruckner's Te Deum.
The third movement harks back in structure and style to the sixth movement of the Deutsches Requiem, composed not many years earlier. A baritone soloist sings the text describing the appearance of the white horse with the rider who was called faithful and true, and this leads directly into a rousing fugal movement, which then in turn gives way to a more substantial and worked-out fugue that brings the composition to its spectacular "Hallelujah! Amen!" conclusion.
In composing such a work, Brahms was of course going with the extraordinary flowering of German nationalism in his time. While the Triumphlied dropped out of sight for political reasons after World War One, I see no reason why it can't be reappraised, politics apart, in our day. After all, well over a century has elapsed. And in that century-plus, we've seen no great issue with listening to recordings and attending concerts given by artists who worked throughout the Nazi regime, nor indeed with marvelling at the operas of Wagner, the virulently anti-Semitic darling of the Third Reich. By comparison, the sins of Brahms in this work shrink to a mild peccadillo. By all means, seek the Triumphlied out and enjoy it, for it is one of its composer's finest creations for voices and orchestra.
