Back in the very early days of this blog, I used to sometimes write about groups of works in a single post. That's how I originally covered this piece, but I've now decided to give it a post of its own.
English composer Gustav Holst had a decided gift for digging into corners and byways of belief that other composers blithely ignored. He studied Indian literature, setting to music his own English translations from the Sanskrit of Hymns from the Rig-Veda. His interest in astrology and horoscopes was the motivating cause of his famous orchestral suite, The Planets. He was one of the rare people who took the time and effort to read the non-canonical books of the Apocrypha -- and it was there that he found the text for The Hymn of Jesus.
He prepared his own English translation from the Greek original, with assistance from others, and set to work in 1917 on the Hymn, a work which shattered traditional English ideas of choral music so thoroughly that other works indebted to it would not appear for several more decades. Reactions to the first performance certainly summed up the epoch-making nature of this remarkable piece. Something of the work's intoxicating, ecstatic power can be gained from the words of Holst's lifelong friend, Ralph Vaughan Williams, who said that the music made him "want to get up and embrace everybody and then get drunk." More to the point, another comment: "The words seemed to shine in the light and depth of a vast atmosphere created by the music."
Holst's choice of text was avowedly influenced by his own personal adoption of some Hindu beliefs. The poem follows an extraordinary pattern, alternating active and passive modes at almost every line, as for example:
Fain would I be saved: And fain would I save.
Fain would I be released: And fain would I release.
Fain would I be pierced: And fain would I pierce.
Fain would I be borne: And fain would I bear.
Holst set this unique poem to music for large double chorus and large orchestra, and the result (although barely 20 minutes long) is both exhilarating and intensely powerful, with much of the power deriving from Holst's unique way of manipulating diatonic chordal passages of music.
The work opens with a prelude. The trombones play a plainchant melody, Pange lingua gloriosi, in free unbarred rhythm. After a cadence of four chords, each one orchestrated differently, the plainchant is repeated on oboe, with accompanying string chords in the manner of the recitatives of the Christus in Bach's St. Matthew Passion. The orchestra lands on a figure of two chords which alternate slowly back and forth as the female chorus sings another plainchant, Vexilla regis prodeunt, in free time against this background. The similarity to the final pages of The Planets, written only a year earlier, is unmistakable. The men's voices then sing the Pange lingua, and the prelude ends with the two alternating chords swaying back and forth quietly.
The opening of the Hymn proper is sung, fortissimo, by the full choirs in unison. "Glory to thee, Father." At the word "Father," the music suddenly blossoms into an 8-part chord with full-throttle orchestral accompaniment -- a hair-raising moment indeed. Descending scales in the bass resemble the incessant tolling of bells. The second line, "Glory to thee, Word," is set in exactly the same manner but even higher and more exultantly. When the composer reaches "Glory to thee, Holy Spirit," the words are not sung but spoken by the different parts of the chorus, part by part in turn, creating a sound like the rushing of the mighty wind on Pentecost. Each line is answered by an "Amen" from a female semi-chorus. These Amens will be heard repeatedly throughout the work.
The music then moves on to the lines quoted above, with the refrains of Amen repeating regularly. The singing grows until the line, "Fain would I be known." Here, the orchestra leaps into an ecstatic dance in Holst's signature 5-to-the-bar rhythm, leading to a heartily energetic climax after the line, "All things join in the dance!"
The dance is followed by a kind of litany in four lines, in which one chorus sings steadily on a single chord while the other moves, word by word, away from that chord by steps of a semitone with each movement.
The singers then join in the first of several reiterations of the plainchants from the prelude, a chanted Pange lingua followed closely by a wordless Vexilla regis in women's voices, accompanied by militant drum rhythms.
The choir then sings, unaccompanied, these lines:
The music then moves on to the lines quoted above, with the refrains of Amen repeating regularly. The singing grows until the line, "Fain would I be known." Here, the orchestra leaps into an ecstatic dance in Holst's signature 5-to-the-bar rhythm, leading to a heartily energetic climax after the line, "All things join in the dance!"
The dance is followed by a kind of litany in four lines, in which one chorus sings steadily on a single chord while the other moves, word by word, away from that chord by steps of a semitone with each movement.
The singers then join in the first of several reiterations of the plainchants from the prelude, a chanted Pange lingua followed closely by a wordless Vexilla regis in women's voices, accompanied by militant drum rhythms.
The choir then sings, unaccompanied, these lines:
Ye could not know at all what thing ye endure,
Had not the Father sent me to you as a Word.
This engenders a crescendo to a vast climax on "Learn how to suffer, and ye shall overcome." The tolling bell scales then resume in the bass, leading us back to the point where the spectacular opening "Glory to thee, Father" is repeated, leading to a slow gentle conclusion on the final lines of the hymn, with the bell scales the last sound to fade away.
