CONTEMPORANEOUS CHORAL MUSIC IN GERMANY
Contemporaneous Choral Music in Germany--Richard Strauss:
_Wanderers Sturmlied_; _Taillefer_; Motets--Taubmann:
_Eine Deutsche Messe_; _Sängerweihe_; Georg Schumann:
_Ruth_; _Totenklage_ and other works--Max Reger’s choral
compositions; Schönberg: _Gurrelieder_; ‘Transfigured Night’;
_Pierrot lunaire_--Other choral writers of the present;
Felix Draeseke’s _Christus_; Wolfrum’s _Weinachtsmysterium_;
Albert Fuchs; Wilhelm Platz; August Bungert’s _Warum? Woher?
Wohin?_; Felix Woyrsch: _Totentanz_ and other works; Wilhelm
Berger’s _Totentanz_; Karl Ad. Lorenz: _Das Licht_; other
contributors to modern German choral literature.
The historian or reviewer of contemporaneous events is naturally
confronted with a problem of greater complexity and perplexity than
when he is taking account of, and giving valuation to, the events and
works of a past generation, even though it be in the immediate past.
There are always present too many forces and tendencies in the making,
to be able to see them as the next generation will see them--more
nearly in their right perspective. And so some reader twenty-five years
hence may chance to read these chapters on present-day music as seen
through present-day eyes and may wonder that this or that composer is
barely mentioned by name or by work. Yet this method of mere tabulation
must of necessity be resorted to where works have only recently been
published and have as yet found but small public recognition; for
this volume is primarily a volume of record, not of prophecy. In each
country, however, present musical conditions are nourished by the
survival of tendencies and styles from the last generation and by new
forces that at present appear in the guise of mere individualism.
Contemporaneous choral music in Germany largely represents the negation
of older traditions, Handelian and Mendelssohnian, in thought and
construction; the after-development and carrying over into the oratorio
and cantata field of the principle of the Wagnerian leading-motive;
and, especially, the florescence of the modern spirit of unconstrained
freedom of individual expression within very broadly defined artistic
limitations.
I
As Debussy in France, so Richard Strauss in Germany might be said to
be the best-known of all creative musicians who are identified with the
development of choral composition along its present individualistic
lines. And like Debussy, Strauss has done his most important work
in the dramatic and symphonic forms, rather than in the choral. Yet
he made frequent invasions into the choral field, and always with
notable success. His _Wanderers Sturmlied_, opus 14 (composed 1883-84
after a text by Goethe), a product of his first period of creative
activity in Munich, is still a repertory number of the larger German
choral associations. It is written for six-part mixed chorus and full
orchestra, and though a work of the master’s youth, fascinates by
reason of the strongly individual flavor of its inspiration and its
power of emotional delineation. Strauss’ treatment of the poem, which
was the outcome of Goethe’s sorrow at parting with Friederike Brion in
the fall of 1771, is strongly subjective and akin to that of Brahms
in the latter’s _Nänie_ and ‘Song of Fate.’ It is a moot question
whether what Romain Rolland[84] calls its ‘affected thought and style’
is not rather an intimate musical sympathy with the Wertherian ideals
of its eighteenth century poem. Technically far more difficult and
making demands with which only a few of the greater German choral
bodies are able to comply, are two _a cappella_ choruses, opus 34, for
sixteen-part mixed chorus, composed in 1897. Not without a suggestion
of Brahmsian influence is _Der Abend_ (Schiller), rich in serious
beauty, harmonious in formal and poetic working out. Rückert’s _Hymne_,
its companion-piece, is conceived antiphonally, its counterpoint
effortless and flowing and suggestive of Lassus at his best.
During the first years of Strauss’ activity in Berlin (1898-1905)
he also wrote some shorter numbers, lyric and spontaneous, for male
chorus: opus 42, _Liebe_ and _Altdeutscher Schlachtgesang_ (Old German
Battlesong) and opus 49, _Schlachtgesang_ (Battle Hymn), _Lied der
Freundschaft_ (Song of Friendship), and _Der Brauttanz_ (The Bridal
Dance). In 1903, however, came his splendid choral ballad _Taillefer_,
a setting of Uhland’s poem for mixed chorus, solos and full orchestra,
dedicated to the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg,
the dedication representing the composer’s acknowledgment of the
doctorate which the University had bestowed upon him _honoris causa_.
The solo parts are small--one, tenor, for Taillefer; another, bass, for
William of Normandy.
There is a great deal of rhythmically direct unison passage-work
throughout the score, which serves to throw the four-part sections into
high relief, notably in the interlude music descriptive of the battle
of Hastings, in which the masses of choral tone are handled with great
power. When Strauss conducted the work at its _première_ in Heidelberg
(Oct. 26, 1903), the epic ‘Song of Roland’ in particular made a deep
appeal by reason of its primitive force. As much as any of his works,
_Taillefer_ shows that Strauss is a poet as well as a composer. It
might almost be considered a choral pendant, circumscribed by its more
definite textual and historical program, of the composer’s symphonic
_Heldenleben._
What is practically Strauss’ only contributions to the literature of
sacred choral music, the _Deutsche Motette_ (German Motets), opus 62,
after Friederich Rückert’s words, for sixteen-part mixed chorus and
four solo voices, were completed June 22, 1913; while the composer was
at the same time occupied by his ballet _Légende de Joseph_ and his
‘Alpine Symphony.’
Strauss’ _Deutsche Motette_ are his nearest approach to oratorio.
But if this form has not appealed to him, it has to others among
his contemporaries. In the same category as Brahms’ _Deutsches
Requiem_ belongs Taubmann’s _Deutsche Messe_, first performed at the
_Tonkünstlerversammlung_ in Dortmund, 1898, and given in New York in
1913 by the Oratorio Society. But where the music of Brahms’ _Requiem_
represents the deep outpouring of genuine sorrow and, owing to its
consequent lyric character and exploitation of a single mood, moves
within a more limited circle of expression and employs an idiom
comparatively simple, Taubmann’s ‘Mass’ rings the changes of a richly
varied succession of impressions. Though the lyric element is by no
means forgotten, the dramatic note predominates. Its beauty is cast in
a massive mold, and notable are the masterly choral fugues, far beyond
anything the ‘German Requiem’ can show. The easily flowing, plastically
contrapuntal development of the work is wonderfully varied, and at the
same time serves primarily as an underlying river-bed above which a
powerful emotional current pulses, often moving with genuine emotional
strength.
Taubmann has written other choral works: a setting of ‘Psalm XIII’
for solos, chorus and orchestra; _Tauwetter_ (‘Thawing-Time’) for
male chorus and orchestra; and a _Sängerweihe_ (‘Bardal Dedication’),
a choral drama, which provides for a chorus and organ in the body of
the concert-hall to stimulate ‘ideal participation on the part of the
audience’; yet _Eine Deutsche Messe_ will probably continue to be
considered his greatest work, as well as one of the greatest glories of
modern German choral composition.
Another ranking work in the choral music of contemporaneous Germany
is Georg Schumann’s biblical oratorio _Ruth_, for soprano, alto and
baritone solos, chorus of mixed voices and orchestra. It is a far
cry to this work from Mendelssohn’s _Elijah_. Schumann, like Bossi
and Wolf-Ferrari, handles his sacred text (extended by much poetic
material) from a secular point of view, yet with great mastery of means
and undeniable effect. There is not much that is inherently sacred in
the Old Testament idyl and hence it lends itself, like the ‘Song of
Songs,’ to a freer and less narrowly religious musical interpretation.
Old Hebrew melodies are gracefully introduced in connection with
the composer’s own thematic material and, like César Franck in his
_Rébecca_, Schumann employs every rhythmic and harmonic means, not
forgetting a brilliant and individual orchestration, to give his work
a quasi-oriental atmosphere. As regards polyphonic handling Schumann
writes in the manner of Bach and Brahms, but identifies himself with
the present-day South German composers with respect to a rich and
glowing tonal color. His choral movement is at all times plastic and
exceedingly varied.
_Ruth_ is undoubtedly Schumann’s most important accomplishment in the
choral field; yet he has composed other works which call for mention.
His _Totenklage_ (‘Elegiac Lament’), opus 33, and his _Sehnsucht_
(‘Yearning’), opus 40, for chorus, in themselves are of such marked
inspiration and artistry that they would serve to establish his
reputation had _Ruth_ never been written. His _Drei Geistliche Gesänge_
(‘Three Sacred Songs’), opus 31, for chorus, also testify to a daring
inspiration which makes itself felt within the limitations of the _a
cappella_ religious song.
II
In this field, too, Max Reger, a Bavarian and a brilliant member of
that South German group of composers among which Richard Strauss is
the most prominent figure, has done notable work, though his creative
activity has been displayed mainly along instrumental lines. A
grandiose setting of ‘Psalm 100’ for mixed chorus, orchestra and organ;
‘12 Religious Folk-Songs of Germany’ for mixed chorus; three six-part
_a cappella_ mixed choruses (opus 39) and a five-part _a cappella_
‘Palm-Sunday Morning,’ to say nothing of his forty easy four-part songs
for service use, and his choral cantatas for the great festivals of the
Evangelical church year--all testify to his interest in choral music.
Reger is a lover of elaborate counterpoint and recondite harmonic
device and he, like Schumann, has been influenced largely by J. S. Bach
and Brahms. From the former he has taken over the cult of traditional
forms, from the latter he has learned to make use of the abounding
treasure of folk-song inspiration, how to pour the wine of new ideas
into the old formal bottles, and how to venture even into metaphysics
in his search for exact expression. This is very evident in his secular
choral works, in _An den Gesang_ (‘To the Genius of Song’), opus 21,
for male chorus and orchestra; the _Gesang der Verklärten_ (‘The Song
of the Glorified’), opus 75, for five-part chorus and orchestra; _Die
Nonne_ (‘The Nun’), opus 112, for mixed chorus, orchestra and organ;
and the imposing _Weihe der Nacht_ (‘The Consecration of Night’),
opus 119, for alto solo, male chorus and orchestra, and _Römischer
Triumphgesang_ ‘Roman Triumphal Song’, opus 126, for male chorus and
orchestra.
Reger, even in his earlier works, shows a tendency toward extreme
complexity in structure and an excess of technical elaboration which is
not counterbalanced by that strong control of imagination which makes
for ultimate clarity. On the contrary, he heaps Pelion upon Ossa in
harmonic daring and arbitrary modulation. And still his is not to be
considered the last word in this respect in choral composition, for he
has been out-Heroded by the Viennese composer Arnold Schönberg.
Schönberg is the head of a school of younger Viennese musical
impressionists and independents, including Karl Horwitz, Heinrich
Jalowetz, Alban Berg, Anton von Webern, Egon Wellesz, who have
abandoned the more romantic and classic tenets of Bruckner and Hugo
Wolf to follow this ultra-modern leader. One of the very few modern
composers the performance of whose works has, on occasion, aroused the
active hostility of his audiences, he has written symphonic music (the
suite _Pelléas et Mélisande_), chamber music, songs, piano pieces, and
a highly original and interesting text-book on harmony. This composer,
‘whose every chord is the outcome of an emotion’ and who, to quote
James Huneker, ‘has the courage of his chromatics,’ has made various
contributions to choral music, first among which is _Gurrelieder_, for
solos, chorus and orchestra, composed to a text by the Danish poet Jens
Peter Jacobsen, translated into German by Robert Franz Arnold. This
choral cycle, written somewhere between 1901 and 1908, belongs in the
second stage of the composer’s development and not in the third period
(from 1908 on), during which Schönberg ‘throws over almost everything
hitherto accepted, i. e., consonance, tonality, thematic use, form,
even program; and retains only rhythm and color, boldly calling this
music a mere emanation of himself, which has no relation to the
receptivities of his hearers.’[85]
The _Gurrelieder_ were heard in part, with piano accompaniment, in
London, in 1910. In 1913 a complete performance with the enormous
orchestra called for by the score (including 8 flutes, 5 oboes, 7
clarinets, 10 horns, 5 trumpets, 7 trombones, 6 kettle-drums, a number
of other instruments of percussion, 4 harps, celesta and strings with
as many individual players as possible) took place in Vienna. Opinion
is still largely divided as to the ultimate value of Schönberg’s work.
It is worthy of note, however, that Ernest Newman, in ‘The Musical
Times,’ January, 1914, speaks warmly of the _Gurrelieder_, which he
calls ‘the finest musical love-poem since "Tristan and Isolde."’
In addition to the _Gurrelieder_ we have from Schönberg’s pen the
sextet, opus 4, ‘Transfigured Night’ (First Period), which, although
not a choral work, is conceived chorally for the strings, and is a work
of exceeding beauty and original tonal combination worked out along
normal lines--an entire contrast to the _Pierrot lunaire_, a series of
melodramas of the most cataclysmic futurity, consisting of ‘three times
seven poems’ by Albert Giraud, with titles such as ‘The Red Mass,’
‘The Sick Moon,’ ‘A Beheading,’ ‘Gallows Song,’ ‘The Dandy,’ set for a
narrator, piano, flute (also piccolo), clarinet (also bass clarinet),
violin (also viola), and ‘cello.
III
Though we have now considered those great figures which tower above
the general creative level in present-day choral writing in Germany,
there still remain a number of their contemporaries whose claims to
recognition cannot well be ignored.
Among them we find a group of composers who, like Reynaldo Hahn
and Gabriel Pierné in France, have chosen the Christmas legend for
musical treatment. And like Hahn, some of them have essayed to
develop text and music along lines of the mediæval mystery. Felix
Draeseke’s oratorio-tetralogy, _Christus_ (published 1905), a work
of splendid scope, falls short, in spite of much incidental beauty,
because of lack of dramatic movement and interest. More successful
has been Philip Wolfrum’s _Weinachtsmysterium_ (1898), an attempt to
revive the old German Christmas miracle-play, and partially employing
mediæval song and choral music as thematic material. The work shows
true musicianship, contrapuntal skill, and tact and intelligence in
welding together its ancient and modern component elements. Other less
pretentious ‘mysteries’ are Albert Fuchs’ _Selig sind, die in dem Herrn
sterben_ ‘Blessed are they who die in the Lord’, published in 1907;
and _Das tausendjährige Reich_ ‘The Millennial Kingdom’, published
in 1909. The first may be considered as belonging to the type of
_Traumdichtung_[86] (dream-poem) we owe to Elgar. Its music is modern,
imaginative and full of effect. Even more dramatic is ‘The Millennial
Kingdom,’ a succession of richly colored choral mood-pictures
portraying the believers of the year 999 looking forward to the last
day. This work, though essentially German, still shows the influence of
Pierné’s ‘Children’s Crusade,’ as does Wilhelm Platz’ _Gottes Kinder_
(‘God’s Children’), an emotional and effective cantata (1907).
August Bungert, in a larger choral three-part ‘mystery’ published in
1908, _Warum? Woher? Wohin?_ ‘Why? Whence? Whither?’, is not especially
happy in a semi-religious text that smacks of theological disquisition.
His scores contain some fine solos as well as choral movements, but are
not especially well balanced, and, despite the composer’s confessed
endeavor to make it another ‘German Requiem,’ it falls short of real
greatness.
Felix Woyrsch, however, whose secular oratorio _Tolentanz_, opus 50
(‘Dance of Death’), attains such a high level of individual expression,
shows but little originality in his early work, _Geburt Christi_
(‘Birth of Christ’), opus 18. It is evident, consulting the list of
his compositions, that it is the secular rather than the sacred that
appeals to him. Aside from a Passion Oratorio (opus 45), ‘The Birth
of Christ’ seems to be his only essay in church-music. We have on the
other hand: ‘Sapphic Ode to Aphrodite’ (soprano, women’s voices and
orchestra); a ‘German Hosting’ (solos, male chorus and orchestra); a
number of individual secular choruses and, lastly, ‘The Dance of Death.’
‘The Dance of Death’ is written for solos, chorus, orchestra and
organ, and is called a ‘mystery.’ Conceived as a great oratorio, it
stands for a distinct breaking away from older oratorio tradition and
is set to a text which strings together scenes from human life in
effective contrast. Its music is essentially modern in spirit, full
of tonal color and beauty, and logical despite excessive rhythmic
elaboration. Yet it does not keep to the level of inspiration
established by its best moments, and many sections voice a distinctly
popular appeal through a thin veil of musical modernism. In the case
of this work the titular use of the word _Mysterium_ is ‘merely a
beauty-plaster borrowed from the French mode,’[87] and the introduction
of humorous and other elements, which are not in keeping with the
serious and exalted style of the oratorio proper, tends to give it, in
spite of greater length and elaboration, the character of a cantata.
In this form, or rather in that of a programmatic choral ballad with
orchestra, Wilhelm Berger’s _Totentanz_, after Goethe’s poem, is
conceived. It is remarkably effective musically, and was one of the
numbers performed at the _Tonkünstlerfest_ at Frankfurt-on-the-Main in
1914.
Karl Adolf Lorenz’s oratorio _Das Licht_ (1907), a fine example
of restrained modernism and beautifully wrought choral writing,
and Friedrich E. Koch’s _Von den Jahreszeiten_ (‘Of the Seasons’),
essentially music written for effect, though attractive in much of
its detail, should also be instanced here. Some mention, too, should
be made of various prominent composers who, while their attention has
principally been held by other forms of composition, have nevertheless
contributed incidentally to modern German choral literature.
Ludwig Thuille, the late gifted composer of _Lobetanz_, wrote a
number of fine choruses for both male and female voices; Oscar Fried
has composed an _Erntelied_ (text by Metsche), opus 15, for male
chorus and orchestra, a work of intense, elemental power. Engelbert
Humperdinck, also, has written the choral ballads _Das Glück von
Edenhall_ (‘The Luck of Edenhall’) and ‘The Pilgrimage to Keevlar,’
the last a work of much simple beauty and charm. Gustav Mahler is
represented by his extended choral work, _Das klagende Lied_ ‘The
Sorrowing Song’; and Arnold Mendelssohn has created distinctive works,
both sacred and secular--the ‘Evening Cantata’ eight-part mixed chorus,
solo and orchestra, ‘Our Lord’s Sufferings’ (1900) and, in the same
year, ‘Resurrection.’ His secular choral works include a delightful
_Neckreigen_ (‘Teasing Round’) for mixed chorus and orchestra;
‘Spring’s Consecration,’ a hymn for solos, mixed chorus and orchestra;
and ‘The Tailor in Hell,’ a drastically humorous ballad for tenor solo,
chorus and orchestra.
Siegmund von Hausegger, too, has written various choruses with
orchestra accompaniment: ‘Voices of Evening,’ ‘Sunrise,’ ‘Reaper’s
Song’ (mixed), ‘New Wine Song,’ ‘Grief the Smith’ and ‘Dead March’
(male), and a ‘Nature Symphony’ (1911). Hugo Kaun is the author of
a ‘Norseman’s Farewell’--a larger choral work for baritone solo,
male chorus and orchestra--as well as of choruses for mixed and
female voices. And finally Hans Huber (a Swiss composer, it is true,
but educated in Leipzig, a representative of Teutonic ideals, and
influenced by Brahms) has created beautiful music in his ‘Songs
of Spring and Love,’ opus 72, for mixed chorus, solo quartet, and
four-hand piano accompaniment, and in his four-part settings from
Goethe’s _Westöstlichem Divan_, opus 69.
This study of contemporaneous choral composition in Germany might
fittingly conclude with a reference to the Dutch composers who have
been influenced, creatively, by the modern German spirit in choral
composition. Prominent among them are: Samuel de Lange, with an
oratorio in the grand style, ‘Moses’ (1889), original in idea but
traditional in form; ‘The Tear of a King,’ a ballad for soprano, mixed
chorus and orchestra (1913), as well as various shorter cantatas to his
credit; and G. H. G. von Brucken-Fock, composer of the introspective
choral oratorio, _De Wederkomst van Christus of het naderende Godsryk_
(1900). It contains a notable _Dies iræ_, ending with a double chorus
after the manner of those in Bach’s motets. The Belgian composers of
choral music, whose artistic affiliations are in general French rather
than German, will be considered elsewhere.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] _Musiciens d’Aujourd’hui_, Paris, 1908.
[85] _Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft_, Feb., 1914,
London Notes, C. M., Leipzig.
[86] Schering: _Geschichte des Oratoriums_, p. 486.
[87] Schering: _Geschichte des Oratoriums_, p. 510.