A Requiem for Today?

When Colin Davis died earlier this year, I posted several movements from Mozart's Requiem on facebook, because I have enjoyed listening to his recording of Mozart's Requiem for years. Last month's BBC Music Magazine featured a free disc of Brahms' A German Requiem, which is not based upon the Catholic Mass at all, but upon texts Brahms selected from Luther's Bible. The booklet with the CD notes that Brahms wrote the Requiem after his mother's death, but that he did not believe in an afterlife at all. The Catholic Requiem Mass is offered for the repose of the soul of the deceased, but Brahms wrote for the consolation of the living, the surviving, mourning, relatives and friends of the deceased--there's no Judgment, and no resurrection of the dead, either; no Heaven or Hell.

Listening to Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem for the first time, I did not really hear the words, but the music is beautiful, so often serene. This site notes that the work did not succeed very well when performed in Catholic countries, but was accepted in England and the USA immediately:

Following the paradigm of reception that we have set up for Germany -- the fact that Catholic towns were far more resistant to the Requiem than their Protestant counterparts -- it comes as no surprise to learn that the Requiem was considerably better received in England and the United States than in Catholic countries such as France and Italy. Indeed, we have little documentation of any reception whatsoever in these countries; in England, on the other hand, reviews, commentary, and performances were abundant from 1871 onwards. There is some statistical disagreement about the number of performances of the Requiem in Europe during Brahms' lifetime: while Musgrave cites the figure of 79 performances outside Germany between 1869 and 1876, Kalbeck reports 85 performances between 1867 and 1876 [22]; in any event, the work was most certainly performed in most major European cities, and subject to repeats on demand on several occasions. In Britain, which had by far the strongest and most positive reception (as was typical for choral and religious music, Musgrave notes), the Requiem premiered in a private performance in London in July 1871, conducted by Julius Stockhausen himself, on one of his frequent visits to Sir Henry Thompson. The public premiere, also in London, was in April of 1873, and was the subject of great critical attention -- most of it quite positive. The work was immediately recognized as difficult, but esteemed at the same time as a work of a great composer, already seen as the successor in the German tradition of Bach and Beethoven. The only major criticism came from those who felt, like Hanslick's original commentary, that the concert hall was the wrong place for such a religious funeral service; others also echoed their Continental counterparts and claimed, alternately, that the work was either too "contemplative" or that it was "unemotional." The second public performance in Britain, in 1876, was similarly received: critics remarked in glowing terms of the great masterpiece, and the only major flaw, they felt, was that English singers were not well-trained to sing the contrapuntal German passages. Not surprisingly, when the London Bach Choir began performing the Requiem on a semi-regular basis, the reviewers raved: vocalists trained for Bach, they agreed, were by far the best-equipped to handle Brahms' difficult demands.

Because it does not pray for the dead or cover those issues of judgment and eternity, Brahms' work is very suited to a more secular age--note this story about the MIT community gathering to perform it after the Boston Marathon bombings:

Unlike other requiems, Brahms wrote his as a comfort for the living. That’s another reason why Buckley wanted to perform it. She said traditional requiems are based on the Latin Mass for the dead.

“One of those texts is about the day of judgment, the day of wrath. So they’re beautiful pieces of music — I mean who doesn’t love the Mozart Requiem? But I think that the Brahms is extra special,” Buckley said. “The connection to his mother is important, and the fact that he chose the text from Luther’s translation of the bible. He believed no text is in judgment of the dead.”

So plans for this massive singing event were set midweek.

Reading the texts Brahms selected does emphasize the comfort, peace and assurance Ein Deutsches Requiem offers--but I did see that he does mention the Resurrection of the Dead:

Behold, I show you a mystery:
We shall not all sleep,
but we all shall be changed
and suddenly, in a moment,
at the sound of the last trombone.
For the trombone shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed.
Then shall be fulfilled
The word that is written:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Fascinating. I'll have to listen to it again.

A Tractarian Church in Brighton

The Telegraph featured this column about St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church in Brighton, built in the nineteenth century under the guidance of Reverend Arthur Wagner, a Tractarian High Churchman:

The architect was the local Edmund Scott – not one of the Gilbert Scott clan. He worked with some ideas of the extraordinary man who paid for the church, the Rev Arthur Wagner (1824-1902).

Wagner’s father was a clergyman who had built St Paul’s, Brighton, where his son spent all his ordained life. In furtherance of his High Church ideals, Arthur Wagner built four or five churches in poor areas of Brighton, spending £70,000 (millions in today’s money). “To the shame of the 20th century”, as the new Pevsner puts it, three have been demolished.

Fr Wagner’s style of Tractarian churchmanship became known as London, Brighton and South Coast Religion (in joky reference to the railway company). Wagner favoured not only vestments but also incense. Four confessionals were installed, with little wooden onion domes.

Wagner was not, like others, taken to court under the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874, but he risked prosecution, arguing for his position in books with titles such as Reasons for Disobeying on Principle.

St Bartholomew’s is, if anything, rather frightening in its monumental blankness. It would have been even more overpowering if plans had gone through to extend it eastward with a Lady Chapel at an upper level, beyond three round arches piercing the high east wall.

That plan came to nothing when its sponsor, Fr Arthur Cocks, went over to Rome in 1910. All that relieves the blank of the east wall, from the original plans, is a vast and strange crucifix, painted and incised on encaustic tiles. More easily regarded as beautiful is a baldacchino, 45ft tall, over the altar, added in 1899, of green and pink marble and white alabaster. A green marble pulpit on red marble columns looks down over one side of the nave. In 1911, at the lower level of the east wall, were added some hideous figurative mosaics.

Referencing the parish's website, St. Bartholomew's is still a haven for Anglo-Catholic liturgy in the Church of England, but is most famous for using classical Viennese settings of "the Mass". Today, for example, they performed Mozart's Mass (Missa Brevis) in F (K192)--the Benedictus:

 

You can see more pictures of St. Bartholomew in Brighton in the Wikipedia article and on the parish website here. And take a look at the vestments!

Sir Colin Davis, RIP

Before the English Reformation and the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales became my main focus of attention, classical music and opera were my passions. The death of Sir Colin Davis on Sunday, April 14, really struck me, primarily because he conducted two of my favorite recordings--two very different works:

This Philips Silver Line recording of Mozart's Requiem is a great performance of this unfinished work (the Sussmayer edition). The BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Alldis Choir, and the soloists, including Helen Donath, all follow Davis's lead in this dynamic, dramatic, and grand performance. Some of the sections of the Dies Irae--the Lacrimosa, the Rex Tremendae, the Confutatis, are just brilliantly exciting and moving. Davis makes the contrasts of the Day of Wrath completely evident.

I have listened to this 1980 opera recording of Von Stade and Carreras so often that I've nearly memorized it. It was made after performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and that stage background shows in the drama and passion, restraint and lyricism of von Stade's performance especially. She is certainly not Goethe's Lotte, cutting bread as Werther's body passes. After all the romanticism and restraint of Acts 1 through 3 (even with Charlotte's break down aria, "Va! laisse couler mes larmes"), Davis, Von Stade, and Carreras certainly help us suspend our disbelief that a man who just shot himself can sing for 15 minutes! (You can see Von Stade and Alfredo Kraus in this video from the Met in 1988 just to see how it's done onstage.)

May Sir Colin Davis rest in peace.