California Symphony - Kansas City Symphony

Kansas City Symphony
2011-2012 Classical Series
October 28, 29 and 30, 2011
Michael Stern, Conductor
/
, Soprano
/
, Baritone
Kansas City Symphony Chorus
Charles Bruffy, Director
BEETHOVEN
MESSIAEN
Elegischer Gesang for Chorus and Strings,
Op. 118
Les Offrandes Oubliées, Méditation Symphonique
— INTERMISSION —
BRAHMS
Ein deutsches Requiem, after the Words of the
Holy Scriptures, for Soprano and Baritone Soloists,
Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 45
Selig sind, die da Leid tragen (Chorus)
Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras (Chorus)
Herr, lehre doch mich (Baritone and Chorus)
Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (Chorus)
Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (Soprano with Chorus)
Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt (Baritone and Chorus)
Selig sind die Toten (Chorus)
Oct. 28-30, 2011, page 1
Notes on the Program by DR. RICHARD E. RODDA
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Elegischer Gesang (“Elegiac Song”) for Chorus and Strings, Op. 118 (1814)
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Beethoven lived from 1804 to 1814 in an apartment rented from Baron
Johann Baptist von Pasqualati, his place of longest residence during his 35
years in Vienna
• the Elegiac Song was composed in memory of Pasqualati’s wife, Eleanore
• the work’s text may have been written by Pasqualati
In October 1804, Beethoven rented lodgings on the fourth floor of a fine house owned by
Baron Johann Baptist von Pasqualati, a wealthy merchant and an Imperial Court Agent, and
son of the physician to Empress Maria Theresia. The home was nicely situated on the
Mölkerbastei, overlooking the city’s ancient bastions and the mountains in the distance.
Pasqualati not only took on the eccentric composer as a lodger but also as a friend, acting as
his legal agent in matters of copyright and commission payments, and keeping the apartment
vacant when Beethoven traveled or tried out other living quarters. On August 5, 1811,
Pasqualati’s wife, Eleanore, died in childbirth. The sorrow of that event stayed with her
husband, and with Beethoven, who three years later presented Johann Baptist with a setting
of a tender poem, perhaps by Pasqualati himself, for four voices with string accompaniment
which he inscribed: “To the memory of the transfigured wife of my honored friend, Pasqualati,
from Ludwig van Beethoven.” This Elegiac Song is, except for a short outburst on the word
“Schmerz” (“pain”), music of comfort and hope, evoking the sense of otherworldly tranquility
that Beethoven also achieved in the finest slow movements of his fullest maturity.
Sanft wie du lebst hast du vollendet,
zu heilig für den Schmerz!
Kein Auge wein’ ob des
himmlischen Geistes Heimkehr,
Sanft, sanft wie du lebest
hast du vollendet,
As gently as you lived have you died,
too hallowed for grief!
No eye weeps because of your
heavenly spirit’s return home.
Gently, gently as you lived,
so have you died
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Les Offrandes Oubliées (“The Forgotten Offerings”),
Méditation Symphonique (1930)
Three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, four horns,
three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Messiaen’s compositions are deeply imbued with the spirit and liturgy of
mystical Catholicism
• Les Offrandes Oubliées was his earliest important orchestral work, composed
the year he graduated from the Paris Conservatoire at age twenty
Oct. 28-30, 2011, page 2
• Messiaen once considered titling the work’s three sections The Cross, The Sin
and The Eucharist
Almost like a musical monk from a Medieval time, Messiaen’s life, works and religion are
indivisible. “The foremost idea I wanted to express in music, the one that’s the most important
because it stands above everything else,” he wrote, “is the existence of the truths of the
Catholic faith. I have the good luck to be a Catholic; I was born a believer and so it happens
that the Scriptures have always made a deep impression on me since childhood. A number of
my works are therefore intended to illuminate the theological truths of the Catholic belief. That
is the first aspect of my work, the noblest, probably the most useful, the most valid, and the
only one perhaps that I shall not regret at the hour of my death.” Few of his compositions,
however, are specifically liturgical, Messiaen having chosen rather to address the widest
possible audience in the concert hall (and, with his huge music drama Saint-François d’Assise
of 1983, the opera house) in the most varied and colorful style devised by any mid-20thcentury composer. Messiaen explained: “God being present in all things, music dealing with
theological subjects can and must be extremely varied…. I have therefore … tried to produce a
music that touches all things without ceasing to touch God.”
The “Symphonic Meditation” Les Offrandes Oubliées (“The Forgotten Offerings”) is the
earliest of Messiaen’s important orchestral scores; he wrote it when he was 21, the year of his
graduation from the Conservatoire. When the work was performed in Paris in 1936, five years
after its premiere, its three sections were titled La Croix, Le Péché and L’Eucharistie (“The
Cross,” “The Sin” and “The Eucharist”). Though the published score omits these headings, it
contains the following preface on the flyleaf:
“Arms outstretched, sorrowful unto death, on the tree of the Cross you shed your blood.
You love us, gentle Jesus, we have forgotten it.
“Driven by folly and the dart of the serpent, in a race breathless, frantic, without release,
we were descending into sin as into a tomb.
“Here is the table pure, the source of charity, the banquet of the poor; here is adorable
Mercy offering the bread of Life and of Love. You love us, gentle Jesus, we had forgotten it.”
The emotional progression of the work’s three continuous sections (slow–fast–slow) are
elucidated by the markings in the score: “dolorous, profoundly sad;” “ferocious, desperate,
breathless;” “with great pity and great love.” Each portion has an obvious programmatic
association, but the closing “Communion” reaches into a realm beyond mere depiction, for it is
nothing less than Messiaen’s evocation of eternity through music of near motionlessness — as
though time itself had been mystically suspended. This is music of beauty and pure, rich
feeling; “fantastic music,” as Karlheinz Stockhausen once said, “of the stars.”
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Ein deutsches Requiem (“A German Requiem”) for Soprano and Baritone
Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 45 (1857-1868)
Woodwinds in pairs plus piccolo and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, organ (ad libitum) and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Brahms was moved to compose his German Requiem by the deaths of his
mother and Robert Schumann, his mentor
• the work sets texts taken from the Lutheran Bible rather than from the
traditional Latin liturgy
• the German Requiem, premiered when he was 35, won for Brahms
international fame and economic security
Oct. 28-30, 2011, page 3
Robert Schumann was the most influential person who ever came into the life of Johannes
Brahms. It was Schumann who hailed Brahms in print as the “savior of German music” when
the young composer had only just begun his life’s work. It was to Schumann that Brahms
looked when he was searching to establish not only the technique of his compositions, but also
the philosophical basis on which they were founded. And it was the Schumann family, first
Robert and later his wife, Clara, who provided encouragement, constructive criticism and
affection to Brahms throughout his life. It is no surprise, then, that Brahms was deeply moved
by the premature death of his mentor in 1856, the first profound grief to fall upon his life.
Schumann encouraged Brahms to write in the grand forms of the great Classical
composers, and Brahms began a symphony the year after Schumann’s death. Though he
eventually abandoned that score, Brahms used the music of the opening movement in his first
orchestral work, the D minor Piano Concerto. The slow movement of the Symphony was
resurrected as a choral work in 1861 and provided with the text Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie
Gras (“For all flesh is as grass”); it served as the germ from which A German Requiem grew. It is
possible that Brahms may have been influenced in this transformation by an idea credited to
Schumann, one that he did not live to realize — the writing of a work of the Requiem type
based on a German text rather than on the traditional Latin liturgy of the ancient Roman
Catholic Mass for the Dead. With a view towards erecting a musical monument to Schumann,
Brahms assembled a text appropriate to such a composition from the Lutheran Bible in 1861,
but that memorial then lay dormant for several years.
It was the death of another loved one that moved Brahms to resume activity on his
Requiem. Brahms, a confirmed bachelor, was extraordinarily fond of his mother. When she
passed away in February 1865, it marked the beginning of a period of sadness and mourning
for him, one result of which was an unsettled wandering through many places in central
Europe. Another product of this experience was that it spurred him to resume work on the
unfinished Requiem, which, with the death of his mother, could become a memorial both to her
and to Schumann. He completed the six sections of his original conception by August 1866,
and added another portion eighteen months later for soprano soloist specifically occasioned by
the death of his mother: Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (“Ye now have sorrow”). A line of its scripture,
“I will see you again,” tells of the touching personal message that this music carried for the
composer.
Though Brahms was raised in the beliefs of German Protestantism, he was not a religious
man. He did not bother with the church, and confessed in the last year of his life to his
biographer Max Kalbeck that he had never believed in life after death. His knowledge of the
Bible, however, was thorough, and he continued to enjoy the comfort that reading it provided
him throughout his life. When he chose the texts for his Requiem, he took the greatest care to
eschew dogmatism, avoiding passages mentioning the name of Christ. Rather than a
specifically sectarian document, he saw the work as a universal response by a sensitive soul to
the inevitability and sorrow of death, and he even noted that he would be happy if the word
“Mankind” could replace the word “German” in the title. Brahms’ use of the language of the
people rather than the ancient tongue of the Catholic Church is not just an incidental fact in
the effect of this composition, but is part of its conceptual basis, as Karl Geiringer explained in
his study of the composer: “The Latin Requiem is a prayer for the dead, threatened with the
horrors of the Last Judgment; Brahms’ Requiem, on the contrary, utters words of consolation,
designed to reconcile the living with the idea of suffering and death. In the liturgical text whole
sentences are filled with the darkest menace; in Brahms’ Requiem, each of the seven sections
closes in a mood of cheerful confidence or loving promise.” This is a work meant for people
rather than for God.
The overriding mood of A German Requiem is one of comforting resignation rather than of
visions of supra-human worlds. Only in the sixth movement is any of the terror of the Dies Irae
(“Day of Wrath”) of the Latin Requiem present, and that is quickly supplanted by the quiet
benediction of the finale. Most of the movements exhibit a tripartite organization in which the
text and music of the opening section reappear to round out the form. Brahms’ A German
Requiem, a work of grand scope and surpassing excellence, is rich in a substance that never
wavers from its purpose of sharing a universal experience through the incandescent beauties
that only music can provide.
Oct. 28-30, 2011, page 4
©2011 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
I. Chorus
Selig sind, die da Leid tragen,
denn sie sollen getröstet werden.
Blessed are they that mourn;
for they shall be comforted.
(Matthew 5:4)
They that sow in tears
shall reap in joy.
They that go forth and weep,
bearing precious seed,
shall come again with rejoicing,
bringing their sheaves with them.
(Psalm 126:5-6)
Die mit Tränen säen,
werden mit Freuden ernten.
Sie gehen hin und weinen,
und tragen edlen Samen,
und kommen mit Freuden
und bringen ihre Garben.
II. Chorus
Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras
und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen
wie des Grases Blumen.
Das Gras ist verdorret
und die Blumen abgefallen.
So seid nun geduldig, lieben Brüder,
bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn.
Siehe, ein Ackermann wartet auf
die köstliche Frucht der Erde
und ist geduldig darüber,
bis er empfahe
den Morgenregen und Abendregen.
So seid geduldig.
Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras ...
Aber des Herrn Wort bleibt in Ewigkeit.
Die Erlöseten des Herrn
werden wiederkommen,
und gen Zion kommen mit Jauchzen;
Freude, ewige Freude wird über
ihrem Haupte sein;
Freude und Wonne werden sie ergreifen,
und Schmerz und Seufzen wird weg müssen.
For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man
as the flowers of the grass.
The grass is withered,
and the flowers fallen away.
(I Peter 1:24)
Be patient, therefore, brethren,
unto the coming of the Lord.
Behold, the husbandman waiteth for
the precious fruit of the earth,
and hath long patience for it,
until he receive
the early and the latter rain.
So be patient.
(James 5:7)
For all flesh is as grass ...
But the word of the Lord endureth forever.
(I Peter 1:25)
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with songs
and everlasting joy upon their heads:
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
(Isaiah 35:10)
III. Baritone Solo and Chorus
Herr, lehre doch mich, dass ein Ende
mit mir haben muss, und mein Leben
ein Ziel hat, und ich davon muss.
Siehe, meine Tage sind eine
Handbreit vor dir,
und mein Leben ist wie nichts vor dir.
Ach, wie gar nichts sind alle Menschen,
die doch so sicher leben.
Lord, make me to know mine end,
and the measure of my days, what it is;
and I must journey toward it.
Behold thou hast made my days as an
handbreadth;
and mine age is as nothing before thee:
verily, every man at his best state
is altogether vanity.
Oct. 28-30, 2011, page 5
Sie gehen daher wie ein Schemen,
und machen ihnen viel vergebliche Unruhe;
sie sammeln und wissen nicht,
wer es kriegen wird.
Nun Herr, wes soll ich mich trösten?
Ich hoffe auf dich.
Der Gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand
und keine Qual rühret sie an.
Surely every man walketh in a vain shew;
surely they are disquieted in vain:
he heapeth up riches,
and knoweth not who shall gather them.
And now, Lord, what is my hope?
My hope is in thee.
(Psalm 39:4-7)
The souls of the righteous are in God’s hand,
and there shall no torment touch them.
(Wisdom of Solomon 3:1)
IV. Chorus
Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,
Herr Zebaoth!
Meine Seele verlanget und sehnet sich
nach den Vorhöfen des Herrn;
mein Leib und Seele freuen sich
in dem lebendigen Gott.
Wohl denen, die in deinem Hause wohnen,
die loben dich immerdar!
How amiable are thy tabernacles,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth
for the courts of the Lord:
my heart and flesh rejoice
in the living God.
Blessed are they that dwell in thy house:
they will still be praising thee.
(Psalm 84:1-2, 4)
V. Soprano Solo and Chorus
Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit;
aber ich will euch wieder sehen
und euer Herz soll sich freuen,
und eure Freude soll niemand
von euch nehmen.
Ye now have sorrow;
but I will see you again,
and your heart shall rejoice,
and your joy no man shall take from you.
Ich will euch trösten,
wie einen seine Mutter tröstet.
I will comfort you
as one comforted by his mother.
Sehet mich an: ich habe
eine kleine Zeit Mühe und Arbeit gehabt
und habe grossen Trost funden.
(John 16:22)
(Isaiah 66:13)
Behold with your eyes,
how that I labored but a little,
and found for myself much rest.
(Ecclesiasticus 51:35)
VI. Baritone Solo and Chorus
Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt,
sondern die zukünftige suchen wir.
Siehe, ich sage euch ein Geheimnis.
Wir werden nicht alle entschlafen,
wir werden aber alle verwandelt werden;
und dasselbige plötzlich in einem Augenblick
zu der Zeit der letzten Posaune.
Denn es wird die Posaune schallen
und die Toten werden auferstehen
unverweslich,
und wir werden verwandelt werden.
Dann wird erfüllet werden
das Wort, das geschrieben steht:
Der Tod ist verschlungen in den Sieg.
For here we have no continuing city,
but we seek one to come.
(Hebrews 13:14)
Behold, I shew you a mystery;
we shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trumpet:
for the trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed.
Then shall be brought to pass
the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory.
Oct. 28-30, 2011, page 6
Tod, wo ist dein Stachel?
Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg?
Herr, du bist würdig
zu nehmen Preis und Ehre und Kraft,
denn du hast alle Dinge erschaffen,
und durch deinen Willen
haben sie das Wesen und sind geschaffen.
O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?
(I Corinthians 15:51-2, 54-5)
Thou art worthy, O Lord,
to receive glory and honor and power:
for thou hast created all things,
and for thy pleasure
they are and were created.
(Revelation 4:11)
VII. Chorus
Selig sind die Toten,
die in dem Herren sterben, von nun an.
Ja, der Geist spricht,
dass sie ruhen von ihrer Arbeit;
denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach.
Blessed are the dead
which die in the Lord from henceforth:
Yea, saith the Spirit,
that they may rest from their labors;
and their works do follow them.
(Revelation 14:13)