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Music of Fate and Faith

Program Notes

By: Michael Driscoll and Margarita Restrepo

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: Lobgesang (Song of Praise)

Most of the 500 works composed by Hensel are small-scale genres, mainly keyboard pieces, songs, choral works, and chamber music, as was typical of women composers during her time, who rarely had performance outlets beyond their own salons. In 1831, at age 26, probably looking to challenge herself, Hensel composed three large works for chorus and orchestra. Lobgesang (Song of Praise) was the first of them.

Written in five movements and scored for soprano and alto soloist, four-part choir, and orchestra, Lobgesang  celebrates the first birthday of Hensel’s only child, Felix Ludwig Sebastian Hensel, born in 1830, whose name honors his uncle as well as Bach and Beethoven. The texts she selected – verses from Psalm 62, excerpts from John’s Gospel and the Song of Solomon, and a hymn by a Lutheran pastor – express praise and thanksgiving, showing that Hensel saw her only child as a gift from God.

Lobgesang opens with a short and contemplative orchestral introduction in ABA form, a common structure in the Romantic period, setting the mood for a prayer of gratitude. The full chorus enters at the outset of the second movement, which is presented in three sections that focus on the first two verses of Psalm 62. In the first, “My soul is silent before God, who helps me,” the choir sings chords in homorhythm, but to emphasize reverence and stillness, they are in a lower range in piano. Confidence in God, however, increases as the choir reaches higher notes in crescendoand sings a long note for the word “God.” To bring contrast, the middle section is in 6/8, a danceable meter that brings a lighter and more joyful mood. The voices imitate each other in several iterations of “For God is my hope, my refuge, my help, and my protection.” The closing section brings back the binary meter and the homorhythm of the opening section, but now with increased rhythmic activity to express confidence in God with the words, “I shall not be moved, for He is great.”

The third and fourth movements feature the soloists. The alto recitative uses the Gospel of John 16:21, depicting Jesus’ words to his disciples about the mother who forgets the travails of labor at the joy of seeing her newborn. The recitative is followed by an arioso based on Song of Solomon 8:6b, “The Lord gave it to her, love is strong as death.” The arioso is more melodic than the previous recitative and ends with a long melisma for the word “flame” from “flame of the Lord.” The soprano aria, the core ofLobgesang, demonstrates Hensel’s talent at writing lovely instrumental parts that support the beautiful and elaborate melodies sung by the soloist. The text sets the first three stanzas of “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great redeemer’s praise” by Johann Mentzer (1658–1734), a pastor in Kemnitz, Saxony, who was known for his hymns, which were published in several hymn books during his lifetime.

The piece closes with a joyful chorus where Hensel borrows the melody of a chorale on Mentzer’s hymn that was written by Johann Balthasar König (1691–1758), a Frankfurt composer who was a prolific writer of hymn melodies: he published 1,913 melodies. This movement focuses on the sixth stanza of the hymn, “I will sing of God’s goodness as long as my tongue moves.”  The melody of the hymn is mostly placed in the alto part, while the other three voices sing ornamental lines in imitation. Repeated statements of “I want to sing of God’s goodness” sung in imitation by the different voices emphasize the message of praise and thanksgiving for the birthday of her only son. Hensel brings the piece to a subtle ending with all the voices singing “Yes, if my mouth becomes powerless, then I will still proclaim with my sighs.”

Hensel died at 41, when Sebastian was only 17, but he went on to live a long and fulfilling life, dying at 68. Unlike his parents and uncle, he was not inclined towards the arts, but attended agricultural school and became a landowner near Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, Russia. He showed his respect and admiration for his family by publishing The Mendelssohn Family (1729–1847): From Letters and Journals (1884), which would have made his mother proud.

 

Johannes Brahms: Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny), Op. 54

The first triumphant performances ofA German Requiem in April of 1868 inspired Brahms to write more choral works with orchestra accompaniment. Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) was one of them. Brahms began working on the piece that summer after finding the poem in a friend’s library. One of the shortest of his major choral works, Schicksalslied was premiered in October of 1871 in Karlsruhe to great success. Schicksalsliedhas been described as one of Brahms's best choral works along with the Requiem. One of his biographers wrote that the piece is "perhaps the most widely loved of all of Brahms's compositions and the most perfect of his smaller choral works,” while another stated "had Brahms never written anything but this one work, it would alone have sufficed to rank him with the best masters."

Brahms chose a dramatic three-stanza poem by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), “Hyperions Schicksalslied,” interpolated in his novel Hyperion. Harking back to the writings of the ancient Greeks, Hölderlin’s poem contrasts the blissful lives of the gods in Elysium with the doomed lives of mortals on earth who are caught in a miserable and ultimately futile struggle against fate and destiny. The piece is structured as single-movement work in three sections. The first section begins with an extended instrumental introduction followed by the chorus singing the first two stanzas featuring exquisite melodies and harmonies that capture the happy rapture of the Elysian spirits: “You walk above in the light on soft ground, blessed spirits!” and “Free from fate, like the sleeping infant, celestial spirits breathe.” The second section depicts the third stanza, “Yet we are given no place to rest; we suffering humans vanish and fall.” Here the serene and blissful existence of the gods is suddenly interrupted by dramatic changes to show the sufferings of earthbound mortals. The tempo shifts from slow to fast, the meter from quadruple to a relentlessly driving triple meter, and the key from E-flat major to the instability of modulating keys. In addition, melodies are now disjointed lines that often use chromaticism and sudden rhythmic changes. To extend this most dramatic section, Brahms states the stanza twice, reaching a climactic moment every time the chorus sings the last verse, “Endlessly down into the unknown.”

While Brahms set the music for these three stanzas quickly, he struggled for another three years with how to end the piece. He was loath to leave audiences in the state of melancholy that the poem’s ending of gloomy resignation would have dictated, yet he did not want to betray Hölderlin’s tragic vision completely. Hermann Levi, who was to conduct the premiere of the piece, suggested a reintroduction of only the orchestral prelude to conclude the piece. Following this suggestion, Brahms composed the third section as a copy of the opening of the orchestral prelude with richer instrumentation and transposed into C major. The quiet orchestral ending, with its upward-shifting horns, clarinets, and flutes, serves to gently contradict the conclusions of the morose poet, moving beyond them to suggest an essential optimism. The final result is one of Brahms’ most original and profound compositions. For those planning to travel to Washington D.C., the autograph manuscript is preserved in the Library of Congress.

 

Felix Mendelssohn: Psalm 42 (Wie der Hirsch Schreit), Op. 42

Mendelssohn wrote five large-scale orchestral psalm settings, among them Psalm 42, which consists of seven movements for soloists, chorus, orchestra, and organ. A prolific composer, Mendelssohn  considered Psalm 42 “by far my best sacred composition,” while his friend, composer Robert Schumann, described it as “…the highest pinnacle ever reached by Mendelssohn the church composer or, indeed, by more recent church music altogether.” Work on the piece began in April of 1837, while Mendelssohn was on his honeymoon near Freiburg, after having married Cécile Jeanrenaud on 28 March. Considered a lament, the text describes the pain of exile, for the psalmist is far from Jerusalem and with great sadness yearns for the Temple where his worshiping community is.

Despite the sacred text, Psalm 42 was intended for performance in a concert hall rather than in a house of worship. The first performance took place on New Year’s Day of 1838 at a subscription series concert at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, home of the orchestra Mendelssohn conducted from 1835 until his death. Moving the work to the concert hall freed the composer  from the constraints on length, structure, and instrumentation that likely would have been placed upon the work had it been written for performance in a house of worship.

The first movement opens with an atmospheric instrumental introduction in 6/4 meter, which, combined with an off-beatrhythmic figure in the strings, represents the panting deer mentioned in the first verse of the psalm, “As the deer cries out for fresh  water, so my soul cries out for you, O God.” The alto part opens with a yearning melody that is imitated by the other voices. The gradual addition of higher-pitched instruments along with many suspensions brilliantly portrays the sense of longing implied by the text. The choral writing is characterized by long melodic lines in polyphony interspersed with sections of homorhythm. The second and third movements feature the soprano soloist. The striking and lyrical aria of the second movement sets the second verse, “My soul thirsts for God,” where the yearning is emphasized by the oboe solo and strings. The third movement consists of a short soprano recitative for the third verse, “My tears have been my food day and night.” The section  that follows brings a contrasting mood, moving from somber to a lively and declamatory aria supported by a three-part chorus of treble voices, as the psalmist remembers happier times in the Temple praising God with “rejoicing and with  thanksgiving.” The fanfare-like fourth movement, for chorus and full orchestra, opens with the tenors and basses singing in unison the fifth verse of the psalm, “Why so sorrowful, my soul?” The sopranos and altos answer with “Wait for the Lord,” followed by urgent repetitions of the words in homorhythm.

For the fifth movement, Mendelssohn uses a more extended soprano recitative, this time with flutes added to accompanying strings, with the soprano singing verses six and seven of the psalm. The sixth movement features an unusual vocal scoring for soprano solo and four-part tenor-bass quartet. The quartet sings the reassuring eighth verse of Psalm 42, “The Lord has promised his kindness by day” in homorhythm alternating with the soprano soloist, who sings the anguished ninth verse, “Why have you forgotten me?” with wide leaps and angular melodic lines. The soprano and quartet join toward the end of the movement, yet they each still sing their separate psalm verses.

Mendelssohn skips the tenth verse, and sets the eleventh and closing verse of the psalm in the last movement. The text, “What troubles you, my soul?” is nearly identical to the text of the fifth verse, which was set in the fourth movement. As might be expected, Mendelssohn brings back much of the musical material from the fourth movement, including the recognizable “Await God” motive. However, rather than repeat the music exactly, he varies and develops his musical ideas in a triumphant ending where the psalmist concludes that hope in God will eventually bring him back home. Mendelssohn adds a type of doxology text to close the psalm, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, now and for all time!” set to a jubilant concluding fugue.

COMPOSERS

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805–1847)

Drawn together by their shared love of music and exceptional talents, Fanny and her more famous composer brother Felix, who was four years her junior, developed a close relationship that was to endure throughout their lives. The two received similar musical training, including lessons with Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a student of Mozart. Like her brother, Fanny was something of a prodigy, playing all twenty-four preludes from Bach’sThe Well-Tempered Clavier by memory by the time she was fourteen. From very early in their lives until Fanny’s death, Felix would regularly submit his compositions to Fanny’s discerning musical eye and ear, taking her critical advice to heart and never hesitating to modify or excise entirely material that she found questionable. But if Fanny might have had musical aspirations of her own, to pursue a life as a performer and composer as her brother did, such hopes were quickly dashed: Societal constraints at the time precluded women, particularly those coming from wealthy environments, from pursuing musical professions. This harsh reality was made clear by Fanny’s father Abraham, a successful banker in Berlin, in an 1820 letter to her, in which he stated that while music would perhaps become Felix’s profession, “for you it can and must only be an ornament, never the basis of your being and doing.”

In 1821, Fanny met and fell in love with Wilhelm Hensel (1794–1861), court painter to the Kingdom of Prussia, whom she eventually married in 1829. She subsequently settled into the “acceptable” domestic role prescribed by society of the time. Nevertheless, her musical creativity continued to manifest itself in the prolific creation of over 500 works, consisting mostly of the more intimate, ostensibly “feminine,” smaller-scale genres of keyboard pieces, songs (of which she wrote more than 250), chamber music, and choral works. To share her music beyond her domestic environment, she held Sunday afternoon “salons” in her Berlin home. These social gatherings, where her music played a significant role, were attended by up to 200 people.

In May 1847, a few hours after rehearsing for a performance of Felix’s cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Fanny collapsed and died at the age of 41, the victim of a stroke. Her brother Felix died of the same affliction just six months later. Fanny did, however, live to witness changing attitudes towards women in musical professions, which resulted in a handful of her works appearing in print, thereby fulfilling her lifelong dream of being considered a serious composer. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when archives in the former East Germany became available to researchers, the full scope of her accomplishments has emerged. At last, Fanny is being seen in an entirely new light. That reconsideration has accelerated in recent years with heightened attention on gender disparities in the classical-music world. “She is now recognized as a really important composer of the 19th century, which is as it should be,” said R. Larry Todd, author of Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn.

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)

Born in Hamburg, Brahms was introduced to music early by his father, who was an innkeeper and a double bassist in the Hamburg Philharmonic Society. The young Brahms began playing piano at the age of seven, becoming an accomplished pianist by his early teens. At the age of 20, Brahms met the German composer and music critic Robert Schumann, who quickly became a close friend and public champion of the younger musician. One of the most significant composers of the nineteenth century, Brahms spent most of his musical career in Vienna, where he was conductor of the Singakademie, one of the best-known choruses in the city, as well as artistic director of the concerts of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music), an organization that promoted music performances. Although he was a friend and contemporary of Liszt and Wagner, leaders of the “New German School” of musical theory, Brahms did not fully embrace their more modernist style. His works combine the warm feeling of the Romantic period with the control of classical influences such as Bach and Beethoven.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809 to a wealthy intellectual family. A child prodigy, Mendelssohn played his first piano recital at age nine and composed his first piece at age 11. At age ten he began taking composition lessons with Carl Friedrich Zelter, a renowned music teacher in Berlin, who introduced him to the works of Bach and Handel. At age 20 he conducted (from memory!) a centenary revival of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in a performance that is often credited with launching a renewed interest in Bach’s music in the nineteenth century. In addition to his prodigious compositional activity, Mendelssohn gave piano recitals and conducted several orchestras, becoming one of the foremost conductors of the 1830s and 1840s. In 1835 the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra appointed him conductor – a position that he maintained until his death. His health began deteriorating when he was in his mid-thirties. In October 1847 he had a series of strokes and died on November 4, 1847, at the age of 38. A prolific composer, Mendelssohn wrote an extraordinary amount of music in his brief life. Today his most well-known sacred work is his oratorio, Elijah, but he completed over 50 sacred compositions. In addition to his instrumental works, his choral output includes two completed oratorios, eight secular cantatas, 26 sacred cantatas and other large sacred works, 40 small sacred pieces, and 60 secular part-songs. Mendelssohn admired the works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. He loved counterpoint and studied Bach’s music closely. Mendelssohn biographer R. Larry Todd writes, “In Handel’s oratorios Mendelssohn found a rich variety of choral techniques...[and] from the Viennese Classical style he inherited a preference for clearly balanced themes with symmetrical phrase structures.” Despite his admiration for older musical styles and their clear influence on his work, Mendelssohn was also influenced by the Romantic music aesthetic and admired the works of Beethoven and Weber, his Romantic-era contemporaries.