Berlioz’s gigantic ‘Requiem,’ which is known to all music students, is rarely performed. The reason is obvious; its vast demands on orchestral and choral resources, described in the succeeding chapter, make its adequate performance almost a physical as well as a financial impossibility. The work is theatrical in the highest degree. Its four separated orchestras, its excessive use of the brass, its effort after vast masses of tone have no connection with a church service—nor were they meant to have. On the whole, Berlioz was more interested in his orchestra than in his music in this work. If reduced to the piano score the ‘Requiem’ would seem flat and uninspired music. At the same time, its apologists are right in claiming that outside of its orchestral and choral dress it is not itself and cannot be judged. Given as it was intended to be given, it is in the highest degree effective. Some of the church music which Berlioz wrote in his earlier years has little interest now except to the Berlioz student, but the oratorio ‘The Childhood of Christ’ (for which the composer wrote the text) is a fine work in his later chastened manner.
While Gounod is most usually known as a composer of opera, we must not forget that he wrote for the church throughout his life, and that, in the opinion of Saint-Saëns, his ‘St. Cecilia Mass,’ and the oratorios ‘The Redemption’ and Mors et Vita will survive all his operas. In all his sacred music Gounod has struck the happy medium between the popularity which easy melodious and inoffensive harmony secure and the solidity and strength due to a discreet following of the classic models.
Liszt wrote two pretentious choral works of uneven quality. The ‘Christus’ is obscured by the involved symbolism which the composer took very seriously. But its use of Gregorian and traditional motives is an idea worthy of Liszt, which becomes effective in establishing the tone of religious grandeur. The ‘Legend of Saint Elizabeth’ is purely secular, written to celebrate the dedication of the restored Wartburg, the castle where Martin Luther was housed for some months, and the scene of Wagner’s opera ‘Tannhäuser.’ This work is chiefly interesting for its consistent and thorough use of the leit-motif principle. The chief theme is a hymn sung in the sixteenth century on the festival of St. Elizabeth—quite the best thing in the work. This appears in every possible guise and transformation, corresponding with the progress of the story. The scene which narrates the miracle of the roses is famous for its mystic atmosphere, but on the whole the ‘legend’ has far too much pomp and circumstance and far too little music.
In his masses Liszt touched the level of greatness. The Graner mass, written during the Weimar period, is ambitious in the extreme, using an orchestra of large proportions and a wealth of Lisztian technique. Here the imagination of the man becomes truly stirred by the grandeur of the church. But the most interesting of Liszt’s religious works, from the point of view of the æsthetic theorist, is the ‘Hungarian Coronation Mass,’ written for performance in Buda-Pesth. Here Liszt, returning under triumphal auspices to his native land, tried an astonishing experiment. He used for his themes the dance rhythms and the national scales of his people. In the Kyrie it is the Lassan—the dance which forms the first movement to nearly all the Rhapsodies. It is there, unmistakable, but ennobled and dignified without being distorted. The well known cadence, with its firm accent and its subsequent ‘twist,’ continues, with more and more emphasis to an impressive climax, then dies away in supplication. In the Qui tollis section of the Gloria Liszt uses a Hungarian scale, with its interval of the minor third, utterly removed from the spirit of the Gregorian mass. Again, in the Benedictus, the solo violin fiddles a tune with accents and grace notes in the spirit of the extemporization which Liszt heard so often among the gypsies in the fields. We are aghast at these experiments. They have met with disfavor; the church naturally will have none of such a tendency, and most hearers will pronounce it sacrilegious and go their way without listening.
So we may perhaps hear no more from Liszt’s experiment of introducing folk elements into sacred music. But it was done in the music of this same Roman church in the fifteenth century. It was done in the Lutheran church in the sixteenth century. The attitude of the church in regard to this is an ecclesiastical matter. But it is impossible for an open-minded music lover to hear the Hungarian Mass and pronounce it sacrilegious.
H. K. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[100] Born, Zittau, Saxony, 1795; died, Hanover, 1861. Like Schumann, he went to Leipzig to study law but abandoned it for music. A patron took him to Vienna. He secured a tutorship in Pressburg and there wrote three operas, the last of which Weber performed in Dresden in 1820. There Marschner secured employment as musical director at the opera, but after Weber’s death (1826) went to Leipzig as conductor at the theatre. From 1831 till 1859 he was court kapellmeister in Hanover.
[101] Otto Nicolai, born Königsberg, 1810; died, Berlin, 1849.
[102] Born, Mainz, 1824; died there 1874.