Sacred Music: From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century CD13 - Great oratorios (3) Les grands oratorios (3)
- 艺人
- Various Artists
- 语种
- 英语
- 厂牌
- Harmonia Mundi
- 发行时间
- 2009年01月01日
- 专辑类别
- 录音室专辑
专辑介绍
Soprano I: Barbara Schlick
Soprano II: Sandrine Piau
Alto: Andreas Scholl
Ténor: Mark Padmore
Basse: Nathan Berg
L’ange Tommy Williams, Soprano
Les Arts Florissants
Dir. William Christie
THE GREAT ORATORIOS
Oratorio is just as much an Italian invention as is opera. Both art-forms employ singers to tell dramatic stories: stories written by a poet, set by a composer, and performed to listening audiences. But whereas opera is classical and pagan in subject,
oratorio is Catholic and sacred. The inventors of opera became immortal, but the inventor of oratorio became a saint. Theconfraternity (congregazione) which developed the musical ‘oratorio’ was founded in the 1550s in Rome by St Filippo Neri. Under his guidance, they sang sacred hymns (laude) together in their praying room (‘oratorio’) and later started to perform religious stories in music, attracting ever-larger crowds of believers. They quickly adopted the new operatic style with arias and recitatives, and the instrumental technique of basso continuo. Oratorios were not staged, but often the hall or church was lavishly decorated, and people dressed up for the performances as for major festal occasions. By the later seventeenth century the genre (under various names) was established in many cities of Italy as well as in Vienna. It was cultivated by confraternities, civic associations, academies, monastic schools, and conservatories, and increasingly also by nobles in their private palaces. Performances were usually held in Lent or on major Church feasts, combined with religious services. While enjoying these musical entertainments with vocal soloists including castratos (and, later, women), patrons of oratorio thus had the advantage over opera-goers that they were simultaneously nurturing their spiritual well-being.
Oratorio arrived in Venice, the world capital of opera, only in the 1660s. The Congregation of Santa Maria della Fava started it on a shoe-string budget, it seems, but soon managed to employ significant Venetian composers such as Giovanni Legrenzi and Carlo Pallavicino. They also co-operated with the famous Venetian conservatories, where orphan girls were educated, providing cheap young voices. Instrumentalists were usually hired from St Mark’s Basilica at low rates.
The world capital of oratorio was still Rome, where Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) composed most of his works in this genre. He wrote thirty-eight oratorios, sacred cantatas and Passions, twenty-one of which are extant. The autograph score of the present work is inscribed ‘Il primo omicidio, Oratorio a 6 voci . . . Venezia, Gennaio 1707’ (The First Murder, Oratorio for Six Voices . . .Venice, January 1707) and dated at the end ‘7 Gennaio 1707’.
The subject – the sad and gruesome story of the first murder and its implications for humankind – was typical of oratorio. Several works on Cain and Abel are known by other composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The action is in two parts – the usual form – and involves the dramatis personae Adam (tenor), Eve (soprano), Cain (alto), Abel (soprano), the Voice of God (alto), and the Voice of Lucifer (bass). In addition, the voice of the slain Abel (soprano) is heard from the heavens. There are no scene divisions but monologues and dialogues are separated by da capo arias or duets at regular intervals.
Adam and Eve, in suitably contrasted arias, grieve over the sin which has driven them out of Paradise, holding up an example to their sons. The angelic Abel comforts his parents with a pastoral aria, hoping that his sacrifice of a lamb from his flock will placate God. Cain, already jealous, claims the right of placating God for himself as the first-born son. Adam and Eve agree to both sacrifices; Cain and Abel then sing a duet (‘Dio pietoso’) in which they describe the outcomes of their respective burnt offerings, Cain already murmuring death-threats to his brother. The Voice of God blesses Abel’s sacrifice with an accompanied recitative and an aria, reinforced by Adam and Eve in a duet. Then – introduced by a sinfonia ‘Grave, e orrido, e staccato’ – the Voice of Lucifer whispers into Cain’s ear; he decides to kill Abel, singing his aria to himself. Part One concludes with a dialogue and contrapuntal duet contrasting the credulousness of innocent Abel to the hateful asides of Cain.
In Part Two, the brothers have left for the plains; the rustling of the streams and breezes disturbs Cain like a foreboding, whereas Abel, answering him immediately, hears only peace and happiness. These two characteristic ‘nature arias’ are both in the same key (D minor) but magnificently contrasted. The fatal blows are struck in a brief dialogue ending with Abel’s ‘Io moro’ (I die) and a dramatic sinfonia. What follows is almost a dialogue scene between the Voice of God and Cain, each of whom sings two arias, God also an accompanied recitative. Cain repents: his last aria is a captivating portrayal of mental anguish. Another ‘horrid’ sinfonia announces Lucifer, who encourages Cain with military sounds, but is rejected
by Cain’s aria of repentance. The last ‘scene’ features Eve’s foreboding of tragedy in a mournful duet with Adam, then themiraculous Voice of Abel from heaven, rejoicing in celestial bliss, followed by laments of Eve (a ‘Siciliano’ in C minor) and Adam (contrapuntal, chromatic, in B minor); Adam then expresses hope for new children, seconded by the Voice of God announcing redemption in a pastoral aria. Adam’s final recitative leads to a joyful finale, a duet for Adam and Eve in gigue rhythm (D major). – R. S.
In 1742, Handel was at a low point in his career. He had not yet entirely recovered from the catastrophe of 1738. In that year the composer, already aged more than fifty, had had to renounce his dream of imposing on the English the Italian opera to whose greater glory he had devoted thirty years of his life. Ruined, abandoned by all around him, beset by illness, the giant had collapsed, and his numerous adversaries might well believe that they had heard the last of him.
In fact, Handel had already quit the first battlefield; he was channelling his energies into another combat. In 1739 appeared the first in the long series of oratorios which were to assure him unassailable glory. Although Saul, Israel in Egypt, and L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato came as a surprise to the London public which initially gave them only a lukewarm reception, they nevertheless represented a new path. Even their limited success allowed the composer to resurface and to pay the greater part of his debts.
In the autumn of 1741, he was invited to Dublin by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The Irish capital was then enjoying a golden age: in terms of population, it was the United Kingdom’s second city; intellectually, it was an extremely active literary and musical centre. The audience that applauded the first performance of Messiah on 13 April 1742 bore no resemblance to the provincial public of popular caricature. It was an assembly of persons of taste, certainly more open-minded, and perhaps more demanding, than their London counterparts.
The oratorio enjoyed a veritable triumph in Ireland. This only served to heighten the contrast with the chilly reception that awaited the composer when he sought to present his work in the English capital. A sort of pious cabal was formed, to which the Bishop of London gave his backing: ‘The name of Messiah is too sacred to be pronounced on the stage of a theatre. A church is too holy a place for actors to be tolerated there.’ One might summarise thus the idiotic dilemma into which his adversaries attempted to confine Handel, who unsuccessfully tried to get round the difficulty by presenting his work as ‘A New Sacred Oratorio’ without specifying the title.
Over the next six years or so, Messiah was lost in the midst of the overall output of Handel oratorios, and was performed irregularly. It was only after 1750 that the situation improved. From this date on, Handel identified his masterpiece with one of the most popular charitable foundations in London. Every year he personally directed one or two performances of Messiah in the chapel of the Foundling Hospital. The whole of elegant London society thronged to these concerts, over which the blind old composer presided in magisterial fashion.
Messiah as Handel invariably performed it is a rather different entity from what we hear today. We are not separated from his conception merely by the technical issues of pitch and the instruments used. A certain propensity for gigantic forces began to become established from the late eighteenth century in the grand concerts of the Handel Festival, which were to excite the admiration of Joseph Haydn. Notwithstanding the reaction of some critics, the tendency was further amplified throughout the nineteenth century, burying under its massed effects the pertinence of the Handelian discourse. This state of affairs was to continue right down to our own time, when enlightened performers have at last learnt to respect the balance of forces indispensable to a proper understanding of the work.
But it is too easily forgotten that Handel was never satisfied, as we are today, with a cast of four solo singers. There were nine
of them at the premiere, and six (or perhaps seven) in 1758, when the composer directed the piece for the last time. Thenumber of these soloists varied over the years; moreover, it was not always the same registers that were doubled. Handel here seems more concerned with the dramatic possibilities offered by contrasts in timbre than with a straightforward musical correspondence between voice and score.
Messiah is an oratorio; as such, it obeys certain rules, related to those of the theatre. It seeks to interest us in a dramatic narrative whose different episodes it presents. However, let us observe one key point: Jesus Christ, the central and only hero of the story, is never presented directly. With the exception of two short narrative fragments, the text utilised is not that of the Gospels. The libretto is dominated by the prophets, by St Paul, by the St John of the Book of Revelation. Everything hinges on a character who is never shown – a situation which has allowed some amusingly irreverent critics to draw a parallel with Bizet’s L’Arlésienne.
Unlike the great Lutheran Passions, Handel’s masterpiece does not focus solely on the human experience of the suffering Christ. What we have here is, rather, a religious meditation on the intervention of a redeeming God in the lives of mankind. Thus Messiah is divided into three parts, each of which possesses its own independent dramatic action. Handel’s genius is to have maintained the tension in a quasi-metaphysical discourse. In fact, nothing is settled in advance. The conflict between divine peace (a word that constantly recurs in the text) and human torment remains in suspense until the final Amen.
In reality, Messiah falls within the province of liturgy as much as theatre. A musical discourse lasting three hours, divided into scenes, punctuated by the splendour of the great choruses, teaches us the essence of what we must know and understand of our redemption. The first part exposes God’s order, the peace of the flock in the fold, the sweetness of sacrifice accepted; it culminates in the image of the Nativity. In contrast, the second part is given over to violence. It speaks to us of the unutterable sorrow of Christ sacrificed, of God’s order refused, of revolt and combat, to end with the victorious shout of the celebrated ‘Hallelujah!’ The last part concerns us still more directly; it is our own death which is here transcended and as it were negated by the victory of the Lamb. There remains only to sing the benediction and bliss of the Amen.
The musical layout of this immense sermon strikes the imagination by its ample scale. Let it be pointed out that it is indeed a question of scale, not of volume of sound; it was only after the composer’s death that a massive build-up of orchestral forces gave his Messiah the dimensions of a Babylonian temple. – J.-F. L.
In 1832 Felix Mendelssohn wrote in a letter to his Friend Eduard Devrient, ‘I am to write an oratorio for the Cäcilienverein . . . The subject is to be the Apostle Paul: in the first part, the stoning of Stephen and the persecution; in the second part, the conversion; in the third, the Christian life and the preaching and either the martyr’s death or the parting from the community.’ The composer’s concept soon assumed a more definite shape: ‘I should like the words to come mainly from the Bible and the Hymn Book, with a few free [passages].’ Mendelssohn compiled the libretto himself, with the help of some friends, particularly the theologian Julius Schubring, whom he had met in Berlin in 1825 and who was later to be an authoritative support to him on his second oratorio, Elias (‘Elijah’). But four years were to go by before the work was finally completed. When it was first performed under the composer in 1836 at the eighteenth Lower Rhine Music Festival in Düsseldorf it was a triumphant success and appeared to put in the shade everything that had been written in the field of the oratorio in Germany since Haydn’s late works. From Düsseldorf Paulus (‘St Paul’) embarked on its conquest of Europe. After a revision it was performed more than fifty times in over forty towns during the following eighteen months, enjoying a popularity that would be surpassed only by Elias. Instead of being in three parts as originally planned, the action takes place in two large sections. Stephen preaches the teachings of the Lord and, slandered by false witnesses, is stoned by the enraged crowds for
this ‘blasphemy’. Saul of Tarsus is one of the most fanatical opponents of the Christian doctrine. On the road to Damascus, however, the voice of Jesus of Nazareth speaks to him. He is struck blind for three days, but at God’s command he is healed by Ananias and perceives his true vocation. He is baptised and under the name of Paul, becomes a zealous champion of the new faith. As an apostle he journeys with Barnabas throughout the land to convert others and to preach peace. But he finds himself in the same situation as Stephen. The excited people demand that he be put to death, which is prevented only through God’s help. Paul goes to Jerusalem to continue his mission.
This narrative inspired Mendelssohn to an impressive and varied musical structure that successfully combined traditional elements with the prevailing nineteenth-century tendencies. The discovery of these stylistic relationships makes attentive listening to this oratorio a thrilling musical experience.
Audiences were struck from the very beginning by the particular role of the chorale. The chorale Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme is already heard in the Overture and appears repeatedly throughout the work. Whether in this form, or as a simple chorale, a chorale-motet (no.35) or as a movement with independent orchestral interludes, this interpolation of the chorale seemed highly questionable to many of his contemporaries as an all too conspicuous harking back to the music of the past. But to Mendelssohn the inclusion of the chorale was a matter of course. Only a few years before there had been several chorale-cantatas (one of them on the chorale Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott, which is also used a cantus firmus in the chorale section ‘Aber unser Gott ist im Himmel’, no.35) in which Mendelssohn attempted to come to terms with the great model of Bach. In this connection the young composer wrote, ‘If it has similarities with Sebastian Bach, I can do nothing about it, because I wrote it as I felt it, and if it happens that I feel the word as old Bach did, then I like it all the better. And after all, you won’t think that I copied his forms without content: since, out of sheer aversion and futility I should not be able to write a piece to the end.’ These words could just as well apply to Paulus, in so far as Mendelssohn sought to fuse both Bach’s and his own wealth of ideas. Besides the chorales, the contemplative choruses (like nos.10, 21, 42) and the ample opening and final choruses play only a relative part in the action. In their decidedly sumptuously structured vocal writing, their tension-span raised to a hymn-like intensity, and the finely balanced relationship between chordal and polyphonically lightened passages, the model who most readily comes to mind is Handel, with whose oratorios Mendelssohn became acquainted in England and whose Israel in Egypt he performed in 1833 at the Düsseldorf Music Festival. But here, too, one could say the same thing as about other ‘historicising’ forms. They originated in a very different period, under different premises and with different objects in view and must, therefore, be different in sound and effect. Mendelssohn expressed it as follows, ‘. . . that everything old and good remains new, even if that which is added is bound to be different from the old, because it emanates from new and different people.’ – R. W.
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