Sacred Music: From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century CD22

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艺人: Various Artists
语种: 拉丁语
厂牌: Harmonia Mundi ‎
发行时间: 2009年01月01日
专辑类别: 录音室专辑

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Sibylla Rubens, soprano - Annette Markert, alto

Ian Bostridge, ténor - Hanno Müller-Brachmann, baryton

La Chapelle Royale - Collegium Vocale

Orchestre des Champs Élysées - dir. Philippe Herreweghe

REQUIEM

The ‘Mass of the Dead’ is generally called after the first word of its Introit: Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine (Grant them eternal rest, O Lord). The ritual and organisation (ordo) of this Mass have varied significantly from one time and place to another. The Roman rite, fixed only around the tenth or eleventh century, is the best-known: the Ordinary, reduced to the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, is supplemented by the Introit Requiem, the Gradual Requiem, the Tract Absolve, the Offertory Domine Jesu Christe, and the Communion Lux aeterna. Throughout the Mass, these texts develop three main themes like extended metaphors: rest (requiem), light (lux), and eternity (aeternam, perpetua). In France and England, a different ritual was possible until the Counter-Reformation, consisting of the Introit Requiem, Gradual Si ambulem, Tract Sicut cervus, Offertory Domine Jesu Christe (with numerous textual variants), and Communion Lux aeterna. In the Roman rite, the Dies irae (Sequence of the Dead) gradually came to replace the officially approved Tract. But France tolerated this controversial practice only at a much later date: the Requiems of Ockeghem, Gilles, and even Fauré have no Dies irae.

It was only from the fifteenth century onwards that composers began to write polyphonic settings of the Mass of the Dead, including those of Ockeghem and Brumel (Dufay’s setting is lost). After this, requiems underwent the same diversity of treatment as masses: they might be composed on liturgical cantus firmi (from Ockeghem to Duruflé); in figural choral style, as with Palestrina, Victoria, Morales, Du Caurroy, and Cavalli; or in concertante style for soloists, chorus and orchestra, like

those of Gilles, Campra, Hasse, Michael Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, and many others. Mozart’s Requiem is an integral part of one of history’s most tenacious myths, that of the destitute composer breathing his last in the midst of general indifference. By having Mozart literally killed on the job by his rival Salieri, the cinema some years ago revived yet another of the myths associated with this sad demise – albeit involuntarily, for we have almost forgotten the primary allegory of Forman’s Amadeus: the bitter victory of subversive mediocrity over vulnerable genius. But it is always a temptation to lend credence to new legends, especially when they concern men and works so freighted with anecdotes and fantasies . . .

To be sure, there is a modicum of truth behind each of these fabrications: Mozart did indeed leave his widow no more than a few florins, a pathetic sum. And yet, in 1791 alone he had earned at least 5,700 florins (approximately £12,000 or $18,000 by today’s reckoning), as much as was made that year by Haydn, then at the height of his prosperity in London! But Mozart was up to his eyes in debts, which, as H. C. Robbins Landon has demonstrated, he preferred to settle as soon as possible, thus discrediting the common image of Mozart the spendthrift. Concentrated in the second half of 1791, these earnings indicate that he had fulfilled several important commissions, and had by no means fallen into oblivion.

To be sure, he was neglected by the court in Vienna. The new emperor Leopold II did no more than confirm his position as ‘composer to the Imperial and Royal Chamber’, leaving Salieri – his perpetual rival – the lion’s share as Kapellmeister and principal court composer. But Mozart’s reputation was growing on the popular stage and abroad: the collaboration with Schikaneder led to the success of Die Zauberflöte in September 1791, on his return from an exhausting voyage to Prague for the première of La clemenza di Tito. And he still managed to write the Clarinet Concerto for his friend Stadler before beginning work on the Requiem.

It had been eight years since his last religious composition. In 1783 the premiere of his celebrated Mass in C minor K427 narrowly escaped the enforcement of Joseph II’s decree prohibiting the practice of sacred music with orchestra except on feast days. The sole reason for Mozart and Haydn’s silence in this genre in the late 1780s, this edict gradually fell into abeyance, so that by 1791 Mozart could seriously and enthusiastically embark on a new ‘High Mass’. The authorities confirmed his appointment as Kapellmeister of St Stephen’s Cathedral, in succession to the old Hofmann, who was said to be dying. But the unexpected improvement in the latter’s health left Mozart high and dry, and he must not have continued his mass beyond the first section. Robbins Landon believes that this is the Kyrie K341, long thought, on account of its scoring, to date from his stay in Munich in 1780. However, it shares with the Requiem the same key of D minor, the same highly dramatic atmosphere, and a similarly impressive scoring (woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, kettledrums and strings), as may be ascertained on listening to this recording.

In July, just before his departure for Prague, Mozart received a visit from a mysterious ‘messenger in black’ come to deliver a commission for a Mass of the Dead. The stranger refused to disclose his identity or that of the man who had sent him. His only explanation was that the gentleman had lost a dear one whose decease he desired to commemorate every year, and that he would pay well on condition that Mozart completed the work within the time stipulated (about one month). He paid him a sum in advance. We are now in possession of all the facts concerning this ‘mystery’, thanks to the work of O. E. Deutsch (1964), who discovered a document signed in 1839 by a certain Anton Herzog, an employee of Count von Walsegg, a wealthy landowner and cultivated lover of the arts. By means of generous rewards for their silence, Walsegg commissioned various composers to write works to which he appended his own name instead of that of the real author. With regard to the Requiem commissioned from Mozart, it was intended to honour the memory of his wife, who had died a short time before.

It happened that in July Mozart had other things to think about and when the ‘man in black’ returned a month later he was about to leave for Prague and had not yet written a note. On his return he took in hand the Clarinet Concerto

and theMasonic Cantata K623, and did not set about the task until October. Exceedingly weak, he composed more and more slowly, and when he was obliged to take to his bed on 20 November only the Introit was fully scored. The following five sections had been sketched in particella (indications of the type of choral writing he intended, first violin and figured bass parts, sometimes polyphonic vocal entries), and the ‘Lacrimosa’ stops short at the eighth bar: these were probably the last notes he wrote. According to numerous sources Mozart seems to have been convinced that he was being poisoned by the ‘Salieri camp’ and that he was writing a Requiem for his own death. The most recent medical studies of the cause of Mozart’s death, with which Robbins Landon agrees, indicate that he died of a concurrence of chronic ailments from which he had suffered since childhood, aggravated by extreme exhaustion. The venesections to which he was subjected provoked a cerebral haemorrhage, leaving him semi-paralysed, before he finally died of bronchopneumonia in the night of 4-5 December 1791.

Constanze Mozart was determined to present Walsegg with a work ostensibly completed by Mozart himself, if for no other reason than to collect the balance of the fee for the commission. In order to do this she asked Joseph Eybler, a protégé of Mozart’s, to complete the score. But, she wrote, he humbly declined the invitation. She then, albeit reluctantly, entrusted it to Süssmayr: he knew Mozart intimately, but, clearly annoyed with him, Constanze would accord him no more than a meagre talent. In any case, he completed the work (adding, in passing, trumpets and kettledrums to Freystädtler’s orchestration of the Kyrie), faked Mozart’s signature on the manuscript, and had it delivered to Walsegg who was thereby hoist with his own petard. ‘Count Walsegg’s Requiem’ was first performed at a memorial service on 14 December 1793 – not that anyone was really fooled, however.

That the Requiem has today become established as a masterpiece is accounted for by the fact that Süssmayr’s own creative contribution to the composition turned out to be very limited. Even if the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei are basically his work, it seems inconceivable that Mozart did not give him fairly precise instructions regarding the admirable vocal quartet of the Benedictus and the choral interventions in the ‘Hosanna’ and the Sanctus. Presumably the polyphonic entries in these two pieces were furnished by Mozart himself, but their continuation – which is skimpy – was Süssmayr’s. The music of the Communion strictly repeats that of the Introit and the fugue of the Kyrie. As for the other sections left in particella, they could have been completed by virtually any composer of the period. Mozart would probably not have made such extensive use of the trumpets and drums, but the Requiem, both as a whole and in its minutest details, is totally dominated by his personality, not that of a superficial and frivolous man, but of a being terrified at the prospect of his own imminent death. – C. G.

There are certain works in the history of music that have achieved such popularity that merely to name them promptly brings their composers to mind. Mention the Mass in B minor, the Ninth Symphony or the German Requiem and it is obvious to every music-lover who wrote them. What is less known, however, is the long and arduous road these works had to travel before they assumed their final and, to us, so familiar form.

It should be noted that here, as in other works by Johannes Brahms, there were long periods and numerous interruptions between the conception and the full maturity of the composition. If fifteen years elapsed before the completion of the First Symphony (1876), the origins of the German Requiem, the full version of which was first performed in Leipzig in 1869, go back to the 1850s. During these years two events took place that left a deep impression on Brahms: in 1856 his intimate friend Robert Schumann died, and in February 1865, at the age of thirty-two, he lost his mother.

At the time Brahms had already started working on the first and second movements. However, between 1861 and 1865, he put them aside in favour of a series of a cappella choral pieces. Then he returned to the work with the fourth movement, sending the result to Clara Schumann with the remark that he was thinking of composing ‘a kind of German Requiem’. As we know, an

intense and passionate relationship had developed between Brahms and Clara Schumann, and at Christmas 1866 it was shewho first laid eyes on the six completed movements of the work. A few days after receiving the vocal score she wrote to Brahms: ‘I am completely filled with your Requiem, it is an immense piece [that] takes hold of a person’s whole being like very little else. The profound seriousness, combined with all the magic of poetry, has a wonderful, deeply moving and soothing effect.’

Almost a year was to go by before parts of the work were heard for the first time. It sounds almost grotesque to us today that the subscription audience in Vienna had to put up with only three movements (together with eight excerpts from Schubert’s Rosamunde) and that at the first performance of the six-movement version in Bremen on Good Friday 1868 the air ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ from Handel’s Messiah, among other things, was interpolated after the third movement. In contrast to the Viennese performance, which was received with general disapproval, the work was a complete success in Bremen and had to be repeated two weeks later. This time Agathe’s aria ‘Wie nahte mir der Schlummer’ from Der Freischütz was squeezed in. These, by today’s standards, rather abstruse ‘improvements’ are explained above all by theological reservations concerning the text of the Requiem. The mere fact that a requiem did not use the Latin words of the traditional Mass of the Dead was, to say the least, unusual, though not unique in the history of music if one thinks, for instance, of Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien. There was a more decisive aspect, though, which the conductor Reinthaler mentioned to Brahms: ‘But it lacks the central point around which, in the Christian consciousness, everything revolves, that is the redeeming death of the Lord. Paul said, “If Christ be not risen, then your faith is vain.” ’

Brahms had compiled the text from the Scriptures himself and sought to lay particular emphasis on the human components: ‘As regards the text, I must confess that I should very much like to leave out the “German”, too, and simply put in “Human” . . .’ Brahms did not take up Reinthaler’s suggestion that he add a corresponding movement. None the less, he continued working on the Requiem and in May 1868 wrote the present fifth movement ‘In memory of my mother’.

The definitive seven-movement work had its first, although not particularly brilliant, performance under Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. The date, 18 February 1869, marked the birth of the Gewandhaus Choir, on the one hand and, on the other, the unparalleled triumphant progress of the German Requiem, which in the next ten years was performed no fewer than a hundred times in German-speaking countries alone – thereby achieving the artistic breakthrough of the native Hamburger who had settled in Vienna.

Although the German Requiem is free of any liturgical associations, its design springs from a profound, unorthodox religious sense. However, in contrast to the traditional requiem, which represents a solemn Mass for the soul of the deceased, in the German Requiem, alongside the concept of mourning, that of consolation and compassion occupies a central position. – R. W.

When asked about the genesis of his Requiem, Fauré replied, ‘My Requiem was not composed for anything… for pleasure, if I may venture to say so.’ And in an interview he stated that he had ‘sought to get away from the conventional’, choosing to express his artistic sensibility, his personal concept of death ‘as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards the happiness of the hereafter, rather than as a painful passing away’. The essential body of the work dates from the autumn of 1887 and the very beginning of 1888 (in the order of composition, Pie Jesu, Introit and Kyrie, In Paradisum, Agnus Dei, and Sanctus). These five pieces were performed at the Madeleine in Paris on January 16, 1888 during a funeral service, under the direction of the composer, who was also the maître de chapelle of the parish.

Fauré composed so quickly that he did not have time to complete the scoring, which was at this stage for divided violas and cellos, organ, harp, and kettledrums. For another performance at the Madeleine in May 1888, he added two horns and two trumpets to this small ensemble.

The Offertory was written at two different periods: sketched in 1887, only the baritone solo (‘Hostias’) was completed inthe spring of 1889, while the admirable chorus in canon that frames it was probably added to the work in 1894. The Libera me was first written for solo voice and organ in 1877 before being added to the Requiem in 1891. Here it contains three trombones.

The style is so homogeneous that this somewhat complex genesis is completely imperceptible on listening to the work. At this time it continued to be performed under the direction of Fauré by the relatively limited forces of the Madeleine: a children’s choir of about thirty voices singing the soprano and alto parts (women were excluded from the sanctuary, according to the Roman custom still in use), a few male voices (four basses and four tenors, reinforced by several additional voices for the high feasts), a double bass and the choir organ (a Cavaillé-Coll). The soloists were Louis Aubert (a boy soprano from the choir) for the Pie Jesu and Louis Ballard, a soloist from the men’s choir, for the Offertory and the Libera me.

Fauré’s orchestration was so original (no violins, no woodwind) that his publisher, Hamelle, advised him to prepare a version for full symphony orchestra before publishing the score. Things dragged on for so long that although the work was completed for a concert performance on May 17, 1894, it did not appear in print until 1900, and then only in a piano and vocal reduction by Roger Ducasse; not until 1901 was the full score published. Since no manuscript of this published version has been found in the archives of either the publisher or the composer, I prudently put forward the name of Roger Ducasse (a pupil of Fauré’s) as the possible re-orchestrator.

It was naturally of real interest to return to the composer’s original concept. The discovery of the original material of the Madeleine performance, corrected and in part copied by Fauré himself, provided us with an essential source, because the fragments of the manuscripts of the orchestral score that have survived show several different states of the orchestration superimposed on top of each other and are often inextricable. In addition the three sections for the soloists are lacking.

The painstaking reconstitution of the 1893-94 score was made with the generous help of the conductor Roger Delage. This truly original version of the work is obviously useful when the Requiem is to be performed in a church. The symphonic version published by Hamelle is still to be recommended for performances in large concert halls. Even if it does not reflect the composer’s original idea, it was approved and signed by him; but connoisseurs will undoubtedly prefer the authentic version of this genuine masterpiece. – J.-M. N.

Maurice Duruflé was an all-round musician. Born in Louviers, the youngster came to the attention of the composer Maurice Emmanuel, who knew his father, and soon the young Maurice was on his way to Paris. There Duruflé was to receive instruction from Charles Tournemire, then from Louis Vierne (whose teachings and technique he was to absorb in the 1920s), and later from Jean Gallon at the Paris Conservatoire, where he also studied composition with Paul Dukas and rubbed shoulders with classmates like Olivier Messiaen, Jehan Alain, Tony Aubin, and Georges Hugon. A former pupil at Rouen’s Saint-Évode choir school, Duruflé had formed a deep affinity for Gregorian chant and, within a few years, he was joining the ranks of the finest musicians of his generation, alongside the soon-to-be-famous André Fleury, Gaston Litaize, Jean Langlais, Olivier Messiaen, Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, and Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur. In the 1930s, this young coterie of composers, organ virtuosos and improvisers embodied the rebirth of the French school of organ playing, which now had a ‘neo-classical’ instrument at its disposal, more supple and multi-hued than earlier incarnations, and better able to translate the new ideas into sound. Named winner of the prestigious prize of the Amis de L’Orgue and appointed organist at Paris’s Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in 1930, Duruflé had already written a few works notable for their inspired and refined ideas put across in a language of considerable individuality, such as the Scherzo and the Triptyque sur le Veni Creator, both composed on his organ at Louviers.

Fond of poise and polish, Maurice Duruflé retained a certain reserve all his life. Composing slowly and infrequently, he deftlymanaged to combine contrapuntal writing with orchestral textures, and the use of plainchant with touches of Impressionism inherited from his older contemporaries: Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, Florent Schmitt, Maurice Ravel, and Gabriel Fauré. Never completely satisfied with his progress and driven by the highest artistic standards, which made him the fiercest of self-critics, Duruflé embraced the iconic compositional forms (prelude, fugue, toccata, scherzo, chorale and variations), delivering a series of works, each in a state of utmost ‘perfection’ – a goal which easily earns him a place among the twentieth-century ‘classicists’.

In all his liturgical music, Duruflé’s profound religious faith is evident, most notably in the celebrated Requiem op.9, completed in 1947. Originally scored for soloists, chorus, orchestra and organ, the work was transcribed for chorus and solo organ in 1948. The third version, for small orchestra, dates from 1961. Its first performance, at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on November 2 1947, was conducted by Roger Désormière, with the French Radio Choir under the direction of Yvonne Gouverné and the soloists Hélène Bouvier and Camille Maurane.

Duruflé’s initial idea had been to compose a suite of organ pieces, each based on plainchant taken from the Mass of the Dead. Then, realising his reluctance to detach the Latin text from the instrumental themes he had sketched, Duruflé transformed his design into a larger-scale work which became the Requiem. The text comprises nine of the sections forming the Mass for the Dead: Introit, Kyrie, Domine Jesu Christe, Sanctus, Pie Jesu, Agnus Dei, Lux Aeterna, Libera me, ending with the In Paradisum – the ultimate answer with which Faith allays all doubts: a depiction of the soul entering Paradise. To quote the composer:

‘The Requiem is entirely based on the Gregorian chant used in the Mass of the Dead. At times, the chant is incorporated unaltered and the orchestra intervenes only to accompany or to comment. At other times, it was from the Latin text alone that I took my inspiration, namely in the Domine Jesu Christe, Sanctus, and Libera me. Throughout, I wished to be guided by the special shape of Gregorian melodies. As for the compositional form of each of the movements, it was suggested by the structure of the liturgy . . . The organ is often used to give special emphasis to a line; it also represents certain consolations offered by Faith and Hope. The work is not meant as an ethereal paean to detachment from earthly cares; in its immutable form of a Christian prayer, the Requiem reflects man’s anguish as he contemplates the ultimate mystery of life and death. The music is at times dramatic or filled with a sense of resignation, hope or fear, mirroring the words of the Scriptures which form the liturgy. It aims to express the sentiments of a human being facing his or her terrifying, unfathomable or comforting fate.’ – F. B.

Sacred Music: From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century CD22 - Requiem (1)

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