I'm always fascinated by the fact that some of the most vibrant and gripping works of religious-themed choral music in the twentieth century were composed by artists who were avowed atheists. In a way, it's both fascinating and amusing to watch as the Great Experts tie themselves into knots while they struggle to make sense of this apparent contradiction.
In the case of the work I'm considering today, perhaps the easiest explanation is that the composer, Leoš Janáček, intended the work to be a celebration of Pan-Slavic history, culture, and national pride.
The Mša glagolskaja, known in English as the Glagolitic Mass, is like no other setting of the liturgy ever written before it. Safe to say also that it has few if any successors, since it is such a distinctive creation that anyone trying to follow in the composer's footsteps would risk a charge of plagiarism. There's no doubt in my mind that the Glagolitic Mass is sui generis.
Equally, there's no doubt that the work as we know it suffers from a decidedly questionable pedigree.
Start with the text. Most people from other parts of the world would have had no idea that the language in which the text is written, Old Church Slavonic, was actually an approved liturgical language of the Roman Catholic Church. The title Glagolitic does not refer to the language per se, but rather to the alphabet in which the text was originally written, a script which predated the Cyrillic alphabet used today in Russia and other countries. The text has many resemblances to words used in the modern Slavic languages but is by no means exactly identical to them.
Next, there's a significant lacuna in the text which renders it unsuitable for liturgical use. Janáček omitted the final line of "Grant us peace" from his setting of the Agnus Dei.
In any case, a work conceived on this kind of festival scale would hardly fit into the framework of any liturgical occasion short of a royal ceremonial or perhaps a victory celebration. The Glagolitic Mass requires four soloists, double choir, a large orchestra with multiple brass instruments, four flutes (three of which have to double on the piccolo), triple woodwind, a large percussion section, two harps, a celesta, an organ, and strings. The organ in particular has a significant solo role in the work, rather than being consigned to simply filling in the texture as in so many major choral-orchestral works.
Stylistically, Janáček's music is unique. One of his favourite composition techniques is the use of short little 1-2 bar melodic figures which he repeats in endless chains of ostinati, all the while varying dynamics, instrumentation, registers, contrasting melodic figures, and whatever else came to his hand. Longer melodic lines use many wide intervals and sweeping arpeggios.
The Glagolitic Mass opens with an introductory movement for orchestra. This is followed in order by the five main segments of the Ordinary of the Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus-Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. A turbulent movement for solo organ then ushers in the final instrumental blaze of glory, curiously entitled Intrada -- or "Processional" as we might say in English. More on that point later.
A two-bar phrase of blazing chords for the brasses launches the Úvod ("Introduction"). The movement consists almost entirely of two ostinato figures. The first is the two-bar figure heard on the brass choir, and the second a one-bar ostinato arpeggio heard mainly in the strings. The kinship to the opening and closing sections of the composer's near-contemporary Sinfonietta is clearly audible.
The music flows directly without a pause into the first choral movement. Strings usher in the plea of Gospodi pomiluj ("Lord have mercy") in a lyrical utterance for the choir, lightly orchestrated but with deep tolling chords in the low brasses. The Chrste pomiluj ("Christ have mercy") features broken phrases for the soprano soloist, later answered by the chorus, in which the rhythm staggers wildly across all the barlines in a kind of drunkard's walk. The shortened reprise of Gospodi pomiluj is quieter, sounding more chastened after the highly emotional eccentricity of the central part.
The Slava ("Gloria") dances in lightly, with wind and string instruments playing in the high registers, and the soprano singing a swirling melody in triple time that resembles a folk dance or waltz. The choir later joins in, as do the heavier instruments and the organ, adding more weight and power. Throughout the movement, passages sung by the soloists or choir alternate with sections scored vividly for the orchestra. The waltz rhythm reasserts itself in the buildup to the concluding repeated cries of Amin, Amin, Amin ("Amen"), and the movement ends with a brief dramatic coda for brass, timpani, and organ.
The Věruju ("Credo") opens with a jagged cello theme which will permeate much of the movement. The first vocal utterance is a chromatic figure for the choir's intonation of Věruju, with a built-in pause in its rhythm on each utterance of the second syllable. This short phrase becomes a motto, repeated regularly throughout the movement. Each time, as it holds up the progress of the music momentarily, it pointedly reminds us (as Beethoven did in a very different way in his Missa Solemnis) that the entire text of the Nicene Creed is in fact a single sentence, every clause of which is a completion of the principal subject and verb, Věruju ("I believe").
At the centre of the movement, the singers fall silent for an extended interlude. The orchestra leads off with a slow lyrical section, which then develops more speed and passion, breaking into a vigorous celebratory dance. At a peak of excitement, the organ cuts in with a wild, disjunct solo, rhythms scattering all over the map. The solo is interrupted by a single unaccompanied choral interjection just before the final bars for the organ, describing the crucifixion.
Several commentators concur in the suggestion that this orchestral interlude might depict Christ preaching in the wilderness, then the celebratory entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, with the violent organ solo representing Christ's Passion.
The final section of the Věruju opens with vigorous, surging rhythms as the choir describes the resurrection. After another reminiscence of the Věruju phrase, the music sweeps steadily forward through the remainder of the doctrinal clauses. A climax of grandeur comes at the phrase I jedinu svetuju katoličesku i apostolsku crkov ("and in one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church"), and the movement ends with a cadence of five emphatic chords, again for brass and organ.
Contrary to the tradition of blazing celestial glories so commonly heard in the Sanctus sections of the great orchestral Masses of the past, Janáček has his orchestra open the Svet with a gentle, undulating melodic line featuring the strings and flutes, giving the music an undeniably pastoral, open-air quality. This undulating texture continues through the soloists' exposition of the text, even when joined by the choir. At the words Plna sut nebozem ("Heaven and earth are full of thy glory"), a more raucous celebration erupts over rapid motoric rhythms, with tolling bells, and this energetic rhythmic pattern continues through the Blagoslovem ("Benedictus") and the Osanna.
The final sung movement, Agneče Božij ("Lamb of God"), opens in a chastened mood with ethereal strings singing a gentle melody, alternating with the choir which chants the text in the most liturgical-sounding passage of the entire work. After the choir sings the verse three times, it is taken up and elaborated by the soloists before the final gentler reiteration by the choir is followed by the orchestral theme pianissimo to conclude the movement.
The great organ solo erupts at once, with a vigorous ostinato moving from bass to treble while other melodic fragments cut across the rhythms. The ostinato breaks off only for six brief cadential phrases in the middle of the movement, phrases which also stall the music's otherwise relentless forward momentum. The organist then winds up into an even more ferocious assault on the thematic material with the ostinato driving the music fiercely to its conclusion. This piece has taken on a life of its own, separate from the whole Mass, as a concert showpiece for organ.
The concluding Intrada returns us to the sound world of the opening Úvod. Again the blazing brasses and timpani are very much to the fore, and the surging string writing propels the piece towards its stunning conclusion on a heavily off-beat final cadence.
Sadly, Janáček's vivid, vigorous masterpiece is beset with questions of textual integrity. The original manuscripts of the work differ in many and significant ways from the final published text. These differences can be broken down into three classifications:
[1] Changes made by Janáček during rehearsals for the premiere in Brno. These may have been made by his own choice after hearing the work in rehearsal, or they may have been forced on him because the less-experienced singers and musicians in that smaller provincial city may have been unable to cope with his wildly original style.
[2] Changes made by Janáček after the premiere and before publication. These can be considered authoritative.
[3] Changes made in the work at the time of publication, after the composer's death. These quite plainly can not be considered as representing Janáček's intentions.
Sir Charles Mackerras, a pre-eminent conductor of the composer's music, made an eye-opening recording for
Chandos Records in 1993 of an edition
based on his researches into the composer's original manuscripts (not to be confused with his earlier 1984
recording for Supraphon Records of the standard published score). There
is also a recording conducted by Tomáš Netopil in Prague which uses an
edition based on the first performance in Brno (this version I have not
heard).
Musicians
are often divided about the value of this kind of archival excavation
and "explanation" of a composer's first intentions. In this case, it
all turns on the question of whether the changes Janáček made for Brno
were made willingly, or because his uniquely wild style simply had to be
tamed a little to help the performers out. That issue doesn't affect
his own authoritative editorial alterations made after the performance, while the changes
made without his sanction between his death and the first publication
are definitely improper. It's this mixed bag of conflicting intentions
and actions which, as I see it, makes the Mackerras and Netopil editions valuable, and access to performances of them of much interest for the general listener who loves the music (me, for instance) as well as for the scholar.
The key differences in the Mackerras edition based on the original manuscripts can be summarized thus:
[1] The concluding Intrada is also played at the beginning of the work, before the Úvod. This gives the entire piece a 9-movement symmetrical structure, with pairs of instrumental movements framing the five choral-orchestral sections, and the tripartite Věruju as the central pivot point of the entire structure. That also explains the curious use of the term Intrada ("Processional") to identify the instrumental piece which, in the published edition, occurs at the very end where "recessional" would be more accurate!
[2] Asynchronous, overlapping phrases presenting material which is given sequentially in the standard edition of the Úvod.
[3] Considerably greater and more complex rhythmic shifting in the Gospodi pomiluj.
[4] Repeated interruptions of the organ solo in the central portion of the Věruju by three sets of tuned timpani, and by multiple choral interjections .
[5] Extended and more complex development of the material in the Blagoslovem and Osanna.
In any case, the standard published edition continues to hold the stage, and has been frequently recorded to dramatic effect. Even despite the editorial issues, you should certainly seek out the Glagolitic Mass and get to know it. There's no other setting of the Mass text which I've ever heard that can compare to the wild, energetic, startling qualities of Janáček's unique composition.
* * * * * * * * * *
A final personal note: the Glagolitic Mass was one of the many Czech masterworks programmed for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra during the all-too-brief tenure of the leading Czech conductor, Karel Ančerl, as the Orchestra's music director. Sadly, his death in 1973 intervened before the planned performances of the Mass could take place. The Orchestra's management had to scramble to line up enough guest conductors for the upcoming 1973-74 season, and it might reasonably be expected that a rare bird of this sort would likely become a victim of a programming change -- as did Smetana's cycle of symphonic poems, Má Vlast.
But no. The Orchestra was able to engage a 28-year-old, up-and-coming English conductor with experience in this particular work, and the resulting performance in the fall of 1973 was a blazing success and a huge personal thrill for me to attend -- even if the venue, Massey Hall, lacked a pipe organ and a rather crude-sounding electronic organ with massive batteries of speakers had to be substituted. That performance was, I believe, the Glagolitic Mass' Canadian premiere, and it remains (as far as I am aware) the only occasion when the work has been performed in Toronto. On the strength of his success in conducting this spectacular work, Andrew Davis was afterwards engaged as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's next Music Director, and his memorable 12-year tenure of that position began in 1975.
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