Adolf Nowak
In Mignon’s exequies – Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Book VIII, Chapter Eight – art and the liturgy are brought into a relationship which can be considered paradigmatic of the nineteenth century: the liturgy was understood as an aesthetic phenomenon and was newly constructed in the context of an artistic work. Involvement in a traditional form of the liturgy was conceived as a fundamentally aesthetic cult. With it the poetic form of the liturgy claimed the same seriousness as the traditionally religious. The aesthetically fulfilled time was granted ‘a sacred seriousness’, which alone could give life eternity.1
The following essay will present first an interpretation of Goethe’s text from the viewpoint of an aesthetic reflection of the liturgy. Secondly it will be shown how, in settings of Mignon’s exequies, the Goethean idea of a poetic liturgy is realized, or more exactly, to what extent this idea was first realized through these settings. Thirdly, it should at least become clear, in outline, how the idea of a poetic liturgy over and beyond Mignon’s exequies influenced the poetic and musical creativity in the nineteenth-century.
I
Chapter Eight, Book VIII of the Lehrjahre is built on the liturgical model: double-choir motet and sermon; after an introductory description sung and spoken text are repeated verbatim. This model stems from the tradition of the Protestant funeral ceremony, a tradition which, from 1600 to 1800 and still in some isolated instances in the 1900s, is well documented through the printed editions of ‘funeral sermons’ and burial-settings.2 However, in the context of the novel this model was essentially changed and subjected to a firm aesthetic intention: in the face of Mignon’s death the arts were called upon to transform the transitory to permanency.3 Pictures illustrating the basic relations of life (mother and child, bride and bridgroom), recorded ‘in reinen architektonischen Verhältnissen’4, hang on the walls of the ‘Saal der Vergangenheit’, the hall of the past. These pictures let permanence through art be immediately experienced: ‘ “Nichts ist vergänglich”, sagt Wilhelm, als der eine, der genießt und zuschaut.’5 The corpse which is laid out on the sarcophagus is presented by the Abbé as a work of art: ‘Treten Sie näher, meine Freunde, und sehen Sie das Wunder der Kunst und der Sorgfalt.’6 Through the medical art of embalmment it is possible ‘den Körper zu erhalten und ihn der Vergänglichkeit zu entziehen’ (to preserve her body and save it from decay). And if the art of medicine ‘den scheidenden Geist nicht zu fesseln vermochte’,7 then the poeticmusical funeral ceremony is erected as a lasting memorial. Of the ‘schönen Gebilde der Vergangenheit’, the ‘beauteous image of the past’, it is subsequently said: ‘hier im Marmor ruht es unverzehrt’, in accordance with the lasting nature of the spatial arts; ‘auch in euren Herzen lebt es, wirkt es fort’, in accordance with the immediacy of the temporal, namely the spoken and tonal arts.8
In Hegel’s aesthetics periods are distinguished by their relationship to and perception of death. In Mignon’s exequies conceptions of death are brought together which Hegel distinguishes as Egyptian, Greek and Christian ideas. In the Egyptian culture the inner being is established, for the first time, as the opposite to the immediacy of being. To be precise, it is seen as the negation of life, as that which is dead. The dead gains the content of the living. The honour of the dead people is, according to this conception, not the burial, but the perennial preservation of the corpse. The pyramids, produced through art, are enormous crystals, which enfold an inner reality which is separated from its purely natural form. The Christian conception opposes this captivity of ossification with the process: decay and new life, destruction and reconciliation of the temporal and the infinite, a process in which ‘the pain of negation’ emerges as a fundamental moment.9 Christianity has, therefore, a greater affinity to the art forms, in which the characteristics of time – transience, decay, transformation – emerge. The moment of negation, on which the resurrection theory as a negation of the negative can be based, is largely eliminated from Goethe’s text. No thought of the destruction of the world (‘solvet saeclum in favilla’, Dies irae, Stanza 1) and of the remorsefulness of the heart (‘cor contritum quasi cinis’, Dies irae, Stanza 17). This filtering out of decline and guilt could first correspond to the rite accepted in the 1500s as that for the burial of dependent children. This rite is without prayers of intercession and without a mass: in addition to that, this omission is approaching the Protestant burial liturgy, in which the notion of the Last Judgement and prayers for the soul’s intentions completely yielded to the proclamation of the resurrection.
The refusal to articulate this negativity has its real basis in the aesthetic reception of classical symbols of life and death. In place of the drastic portrayal of negativity embodied by the skeleton with its scythe, comes the friendly guardian spirit with inverted torch. In memory of Lessing’s treatise, Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet (How death was portrayed by antiquity, 1769), Goethe wrote in Part Two, Book Eight of his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit:
Am meisten entzückte uns die Schönheit jenes Gedankens, dass die Alten den Tod als den Bruder des Schlafs anerkannt, und beide, wie es Menächmen geziemt, zum Verwechseln gleich gebildet. Hier konnten wir nun erst den Triumph des Schönen höchlich feiern.10
For this change from death to life we can recall the words which can be read on the marble statue in the hall of the past: ‘Gedenke zu leben’ in contrast to the famous ‘memento mori’.11 In Hermann und Dorothea (the epic in hexameters of 1797) the Pfarrer says of the wise man and the pious man: ‘Beiden wird zum Leben der Tod’.12 The lament of the choir for Euphorion (Faust II, Act III, Scene ‘Schattiger Hain’) closes with the hint of death into life: ‘Denn der Boden zeugt sie wieder’, ‘For the ground generates them again’; the final chorus of Mignon’s exequies moves in the same direction: ‘schreitet, schreitet ins Leben zurück’, ‘return to life’.13
In Mignon’s exequies the transformation of death into life begins with discovery of beauty, first with the outward glance at the ‘beautiful portrayal of the past’, then in the inward directed gaze of the ‘formative power’, in accordance with the words of the choir, ‘[…]in euch lebe die bildende Kraft, die das Schönste, das Höchste hinauf, über die Sterne das Leben trägt’.14 As Herder explains in Kalligone, the beautiful can also be called ‘das Bildende’, the formative. The exact same concept in art could be ‘die Tendenz […] die Menschheit in ihrem ganzen Umfange auszubilden’, namely to develop all parts of the personality: senses, powers of the imagination, wit, understanding and sociability.15 The formative force developed in and through art, enables life – in the words of the choir – to transcend the celestial bodies and their eternal order.
In contrast to Mignon’s strophic verses the Abbé’s accompanying ceremony is in prose cantos. It is a rhythmical speech, appearing in print as continuous text, which, however, allows for division into verses, as in the free rhythm of the Prometheus drama and in the free-rhythmical poem, Harzreise im Winter. It is rhythmical prose like that of the first edition of Iphigenie and Proserpina which were printed as prose in 1778 and then, in Goethe’s Schriften of 1787, were arranged in free rhythm.16
In traditional requiems the retention of liturgical relationships over many generations is experienced as a comfort in the face of the transience of life; hence the preservation of traditional texts and settings, hence the quotation of liturgical music in new compositions, for example, the ‘tonus peregrinus’ in ‘Te decet hymnus’ in Mozart’s Requiem or the quotation from the choral ‘Herzlich tut mich verlangen nach einem sel’gen End’, ‘I have a heartfelt longing to reach my blissful goal’, in the same position in the text of Abbé Vogler’s Requiem, which dates from 1809. In its departure from its religious origins and in its accentuation of symbols of life and artistic value, the poetic requiem contains, nevertheless, certain links with the liturgical tradition. The relationship, mentioned above, with the rite used for the burial of dependent children – where any thoughts of judgement and prayers of intercession are omitted – is likely to be supported through the association with the resurrection of the weary playmate and also through association of the ‘mächtigen Flügel’, powerful wings, with Psalm 102,5: ‘renovabitur ut aquilae juventus tua’, ‘your youth will be renewed like that of the eagle.’ Above all it is the form of the antiphonal chant between boys’ voices and the two choirs in a type of ritual prosody, an anchoring which is made plain in the liturgical tradition. The double-choir song in the funeral motet has been persistently cultivated.17
Mignon’s exequies can, with regard to their liturgical character of the motets and sermons – be linked back to the tradition of funeral sermons which were published with musical inserts. In Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, ‘Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele’, the choral song is described in a way, which links it to the musical-liturgical discourse, ‘Cur cantatur’, according to which singing, through its suavitas and dulcedo, is more effective than the word alone; and according to which especially the melody of the Psalm indicates the presence on earth of the future eternal life: ‘perpetuam dei laudem demonstrat’, ‘quodammodo angelis sociatur’. 18 ‘Er ließ’, according to Goethe, the creator of the ‘Hall of the Past’, ‘durch das indes verstärkte und im stillen noch mehr geübte Chor uns vier- und achtstimmige Gesänge vortragen, die uns, ich darf wohl sagen, wirklich einen Vorschmack der Seligkeit gaben.’19 Of the closing words of the exequies song, – ‘Nehmet den heiligen Ernst mit hinaus, denn der Ernst, der heilige, macht allein das Leben zur Ewigkeit’ – Goethe writes:
Diese Worte der Jünglinge, in die der unsichtbare Chor einstimmt, warden von den Anwesenden nicht mehr vernommen; aus den nunmehr wiederkehrenden Schmerzen und Betrachtungen wünschten se sich ‘sehnlich […] in jenes Element wieder zurück’.20
The liturgical song is experienced not so much as reinforcement of the returning sorrow and meditations, but as something in its own right, a work of art, according to its own laws, whose short period of fulfilled time, as an allegory of eternity, a ‘foretaste of heaven’, is striven for.21
The counterpart, in instrumental music, to the aesthetic reflection of the liturgy in poetry might be the reflection of liturgical song with purely instrumental means. The second movement, Allegretto, of Beethoven’s seventh symphony (which dates from 1811-1812) is based upon a theme, which was perceived as a funeral march, and which with good reason can be seen as related to a rhythmical model of the sung litany.22 The litany song, performed as a folk-like antiphonal prayer in the simplest formulation, suggests church music and procession; the funeral march suggests a particular instance of procession. If this symphonic movement of Beethoven’s could be interpreted by Arnold Schering in relation to Mignon’s exequies, that does not have to mean, as Schering claimed, that the poetry formed the model for the composition,23 it can also mean, that in the poetry and in the composition a similar liturgy is reflected. In the overall structure of the composition the theme (bars 3-36) is followed by three variations in the style of cantus-firmus variations, then a middle section on A major, whose melody is related to that of the trio, no.13, ‘Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten’ from Act Two of Fidelio, with which hope of a better world beyond24 is articulated. The theme is taken up again in a further variation and fugue, whereupon the A major section is recapitulated and finally the march-theme is heard in rhythmic diminution. The cantus firmus variations may be seen as an artificial remodel of an antiphonal song, whose contrasting middle section can act as words of a living reminder, ‘als wir mit Rosen kränzten ihr Haupt’ and of the transcendant hope, ‘Schaut mit den Augen des Geistes hinan’.
How is the aesthetic reflection of the liturgy realized in settings of the poem, which structures and content are first made possible through composition? In Schumann’s Requiem für Mignon for choir, solo voices and orchestra, op.98b,25 the phrase ‘bildende Kraft’ is set as a hymn ‘Maestoso’ in the middle section and is flanked by sentences, in which the youths’ lament, ‘Ach die Flügel erheben sie nicht’, ‘Aber ach, wir vermissen sie hier’ are answered by the cries of the chorus, the call of the second chorus on one side ‘Seht die mächtigen Flügel doch an’, and the call of the third verse on the other hand, from which the central phrase in hymnic form is taken. The musical form created by Schumann is fundamentally different from the antiphonal song in strophic form, suggested by the form of the text. Schumann’s arrangement:
1. |
Choir – Soloists– Choir |
|
2. |
Lament – two sopranos: |
‘Oh, how reluctantly’ |
3. |
Choir ‘Look at the powerful wings’ Lament and choral acclamations |
‘Oh, the wings do not raise her up’ |
4. |
Choir: Hymn Lament and Choral acclamations |
‘May there dwell in you the formative power’ |
5. |
Bass solo Soloists |
‘Children, return to life’ |
6. |
Choir |
At the beginning and at the end of the work there are extensive choir and solo sections, while a close alternation of choir and soloists surrounds the hymn in the middle of the work. This alternation becomes tighter almost to the point of simultaneity, an alternation of that which was kept apart in the stanzas of the text: the lament on the one side and the appeal for hope on the other. The textual structure and the structure which is taken up into the composition, i.e. the alternation of choir and soloists, is made specific through a second structural principle, namely through the relation of the corresponding character sections to each other. The sections characterized by concentrated antiphonal singing encircle the choral movement, no.4. The bass solo, no.5, refers to the solo passage for two sopranos, no.2. The march-like character of the same group in no.5 corresponds to the funeral march of the four soloists in No.1. These central relations are, for their part, penetrated by a further principle, namely that of certain processional thrusts. These thrusts first become clear in the transition between sections; secondly in the acceleration in tempo between sections one to three: Lento maestoso, Un poco piu agitato, Vivace – and in sections four to six: Maestoso ma non troppo lento, Un poco piu allegro, Vivace; thirdly in the handling of the gestic motifs – from lament to appeal – in each of the tight antiphonally structured choral movements.26 The combination of structural antiphonal singing, predominant relations and dynamic processes shows the historical depth of a compositional reflection of the liturgy: firstly the tradition of antiphonal singing is present in the liturgy; secondly, there is the setting of (biblical) prose texts, particularly the tendency to embrace an arched centre in the exequies tradition,27 thirdly the thematic processes which radiate from instrumental music into the symphonic mass settings.
It corresponds to the dynamic drive of the composition that, for Schumann, musical tropes achieve their meaning less through their presence than through their development. On its first repetition the leading funeral march-motif is subjected to a metrical alteration and harmonic opening to the double dominant. Its meaning does not derive from maintaining the character of a march, it shows itself to be a method of transition to further means of expression of grief: to the choral setting of the greeting (bar 15), then stringendo until the lament figure (bar 38: descending triplets in the violins; bar 39: emphasis and catabasis of the soprano, then repeated figures with diminished fifths.) The manner in which it is sung (‘einen müden Gespielen bringen wir euch’, ‘a tired playmate we bring to you’), avoids the persistent march-like quality (of the distinctive anapaests) through the structural asymmetry and through the abandonment and reversal of the anapaests at the word ‘himmlisch’ (bar 12). In the same way the choral setting ‘Erstling der Jugend’ is reinforced as such by the trumpets just for two bars; its affirmation is retracted by the prose structuring of the melody. The lament in no. 2, characterized by a persistent use of the motif of the diminished fifth and by the repetition of the opening figure (bars 49 to 50 of the vocal parts, is a repeat of bars 39 to 40 intensified by the use of the diminished fifth). In the third movement the prayer motif is introduced and developed in two ways: first through a series of variations and then (from bar 90) through the contrast of these variations with the gestic lament motif from the second movement. A high point in the development of these variations is formed by the instrumental colour of trombones and harps at the words, ‘seht die schöne würdige Ruh’ (bar 77ff). Characteristics of the hymn on ‘die bildende Kraft’, ‘the formative power’ (no.4) – which likewise only appears, without being sustained – are the a cappella texture and the unison. The following lament, ‘Aber ach! wir vermissen sie hier’ is combined with a development of the call motif ‘Schaut hinan’. The calls are characterized by the interval of a fourth (a-d, g-c, c-f, d-g; also c-e flat and a-c) and eventually fit into the cadential catabasis (bars 219-22): but then the last of the lament motifs ‘Laßt uns weinen’, (bar 215) is transformed into a summons to return to life at the beginning of the fifth movement (bar 233).
Like Schumann, Anton Rubinstein set the songs as well as the exequies: Die Gedichte und das Requiem für Mignon aus Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, op.91 (1872). In addition to the songs of the Harper, Mignon, and Philine he set: ‘Ich armer Teufel, Herr Baron’ (which is not ascribed to any particular character in Goethe’s novel), Aurelien’s Lied ‘Ich hatt’ ihn einzig mir erkoren’ and Friedrich’s Lied ‘O, ihr werdet Wunder sehen’, which is the first song after the requiem. The requiem was thus integrated into this series of Klavierlieder; compared to these songs it was given special weight through the solo quartet (four boys, later four male voices), mixed choir with an additional keyboard instrument: ‘Physharmonica or harmonium’. The combination of harmonium and piano which is suitable for religious house music – there are pieces by César Franck, Saint-Saëns, Widor and others – also turns up in Giocchino Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle for four solo voices and choir with two pianos and harmonium, ad lib., 1864, first performed in Count Pillet-Will’s home.28
In Rubinstein’s Requiem there can be no question of musical forms being superimposed on one another. The aesthetic reflection of the liturgy aims at extreme simplicity of the movement and in the simple idea of antiphonal singing. It may be a consequence of linking to the piano songs that Rubinstein set the prose text in a clear periodization with repeated figures.29 In the section, ‘Schaut mit den Augen des Geistes hinan’, the transformation of the prose rhythm into metrical units of four bars follows less from the speech rhythm, which immediately suggests the anapaest, than from the musical gestures of appeal, in which steps of a triad and tone repetition are held in the rhythm of three in a bar, so that some syllables are forced into quaver triplets and some are forced into a full bar.
Only in the closing number of the chorus is the regular alternation of choir and soloists converted into simultaneity: the choral movements of summons and aspiration are combined with the soloists’ key words. In spite of the text being distributed over several voices, the movement is altogether compact and cadential (the soloists are brought together in two parts, which partially merge into the upper voices of the chorus). A purely instrumental passage follows, in which the possibilities of the harmonium (dynamic differentiation, note repetition) and the exchange of melodies on the keyboard are explored. The concluding section builds an a cappella movement around the words which are sung by the four youths at the closing of the coffin, and which, in Goethe’s description, are taken up by the invisible choir.
Max Bruch’s Trauerfeier für Mignon, op.93 (1918) is written for two choirs, soloists, orchestra, and organ.30 The double-choir setting takes Goethe’s description literally: ‘und zwei unsichtbare Chöre fingen mit holdem Gesang an zu fragen:“Wen bringt ihr uns zur stillen Gesellschaft?31 Bruch even thought of a scenic performance:
Sollte eine Bühne oder Chorvereinigung Goethes Absicht verwirklichen woollen, die “Exequien für Mignon” szenisch zu bringen, so ließe sich die Aufführung am Besten so gestalten, daß der Sarkophag mit den vier Knaben in der Mitte der Bühne steht und die beiden Chöre rechts und links verdeckt aufgestellt werden.32
The work is a celebration of art as religion set in a time when the belief in an advanced humanization through art and culture had lost any support. The topic of the sublime is developed in a self-surpassing way, for example ‘Seht die mächtigen Flügel doch an’: the fanfare motif above a plagal cadence and modulation to the mediant with metrical compression, a crescendo and harp arpeggios in increasingly wide-ranging musical space (piano score, page 14); or at ‘Schaut mit den Augen des Geistes hinan’ the instrumental gesture of the ‘Sursum corda’ (piano score, page 22), fortissimo and pesante until the organ entry at the central words of aestheticism: ‘In euch lebe die bildende Kraft’. In the final chorus the words of the four youths are inserted: ‘Nehmet den heiligen Ernst mit hinaus’. In order to allow the soloists and choir to come together, ‘euch’ and ‘uns’ are sung together in the passage: ‘In der Schönheit reinem Gewande /Begegn’ euch die Liebe mit himmlischem Blick’.33 The sound of the harp plays an important role also in the lamentations, which thus appear in a transfiguring light.
The text of Mignon’s exequies has led to developments of musical-historical interest not only through its various settings – among which the setting by Hans Gál, op.26 (1923) must be mentioned – but also through its idea of a non-liturgical, poetic funeral service. The text is fundamental to the aesthetic reflection of the liturgy, as it is also in its other manifestations, for example in Faust and in Faust settings, and is an early and important witness to the development of a tradition of the poetic requiem. To the settings of the Requiem mass in the Roman Catholic church, the Latin Requiem, and to the Protestant tradition of funeral music, which is based upon hymns and biblical texts, is added the poetic requiem, which is not geared to the church funeral ceremony but is composed on newly created texts and draws upon these various traditions.
In 1814, two years after the above-mentioned seventh symphony, Beethoven wrote the Elegischen Gesang, op.118 as a memorial to the early death of the wife of his friend Baron von Pasqualati. The text (author unknown) runs as follows:
Sanft wie du lebtest |
Gently as you lived |
Hast du vollendet |
You passed away |
Zu heilig für den Schmerz. |
Too holy for pain |
Kein Auge wein’ |
Let no eye shed a tear at the |
ob des himmlischen Geistes Heimkehr. |
Homecoming of the heavenly spirit. |
Sanft wie du lebtest, |
Gently as you lived |
hast du vollendet. |
You passed away |
Also here it is not a question of redemption (from guilt, evil, sin) in the manner of Christian teaching, but of completion, ‘maturing’ in the sense of the Abbé’s speech, ‘Nach bestimmten Gesetzen treten wir ins Leben ein, die Tage sind gezählt, die uns zum Anblicke des Lichts reif machen, aber für die Lebensdauer ist kein Gesetz.’34 The ‘heavenly spirit’ and his ‘homecoming’ corresponds to the ‘himmlischen Geschwister’, siblings in heaven, in Goethe’s exequies text, the defence against crying corresponds to the drying of tears in the fresh air (Lehrjahre, p.575). The maturing relates to the mode of life itself: ‘Diese zärtliche Neigung, diese lebhafte Dankbarkeit schien die Flamme zu sein, die das Öl ihres Lebens aufzehrte.’35 As Mignon’s exequies are not to be thought of in a church, but in the hall of a castle, which is established as the ‘Hall of the Past’, so too the Elegische Gesang is to be thought of as religious house music and was first performed in the baron’s home (probably on 5 August 1814). The musical forces – four voices and string quartet – are a distant reminder of the double choirs of the burial motets. Motet style is evident in the prose diction, which modifies the metrical uniformity; in the motivic imitation of the instrumental introduction and the inner vocal part (bars 33ff.) as well as in the choral episodes. That such an extract should lead to a diminished seventh and is then discontinued at that point is explained from the fact that Beethoven, in line with the idealism of the text, accentuates that which idealism would like to remove: the pain (bar 32).36
There is a historical connection between Mignon’s exequies and Brahms’s German Requiem. Brahms was choirmaster for the Viennese Singakademie’s 1863/64 performance of Schumann’s Requiem für Mignon. Schumann had made a note of the title ‘Deutsches Requiem’ in his sketchbook. As is generally known, Brahms had emphatically said to Joachim how much his Requiem was composed in memory of Schumann. That the trio theme of the second movement ‘So seid nun geduldig’ is reminiscent of the choral number, ‘Schlaf nun und ruhe in Träumen voll Duft’, in Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri supports this interpretation. 37 Brahms’s work, through its textual patterns, belongs to the Protestant tradition of funeral music which is based upon biblical texts and hymn verses. The bible had a different rating with Brahms than with Schütz, Bach and Handel, who had followed the sense of the words in the church liturgy. In the 1900s the bible was independent of ecclesiastical and theological claims to interpretation. It was admired as profound literature by philosophers, writers and musicians, and – as is well known – by Schopenhauer and Wagner. Brahms also shared this view, when he spoke, in relation to the biblical books, of his ‘ehrwürdigen Dichtern’, his venerable poets, and intentionally omitted biblical passages which were officially highlighted by the church. Reinthaler had written to him that ‘für das christliche Bewusstsein der Punkt, um den sich alles dreht, nämlich der Erlösungstod des Herrn’, is missing […]’. And Brahms answered that he ‘mit allem Wissen und Willen Stellen wie Evang. Joh .Kap.3 Vers 16 entbehrte’.38 Related to this understanding of the bible as literature is the view expressed by the Protestant theologian, Hugo Wilhelm Paul Kleinert of the Berlin University, about the modernity of this work: it is modern ‘in dem Überwiegen des reflexiv-lyrischen Elementes, in den bezaubernden Klangwirkungen der Instrumentation’.39
Aesthetic reflections of the liturgy play a central role in Faust and in settings from Faust. In the cathedral scene verses are cited from the Requiem sequence. These verses, in their lapidary rhythms, stand in stark contrast to the energetic language of the Evil Spirit on one hand, and Gretchen on the other. There is a tight relationship of content between the words of the Evil Spirit and the words of the sequence, so that through their influence Gretchen relates even the vision of the Last Judgement to her own situation, which she experiences as one of guilt. Aesthetic reflection on the liturgy does not lead to a distancing here, but to an actualization which strikes home.
Schumann greatly esteemed Cherubini’s Requiem in C Minor (1816), and wanted to perform it at an (officially opposed) Chopin-Commemoration in Dresden in 1849. With the regularly scanned, fanfare-like opening motif, Schumann appears to refer to Cherubini’s Requiem when composing the dome scene. Into the metrical regularity of the ‘Dies irae’ verse the Evil Spirit interjects exclamations which give sharp focus to its content. The swift conclusion of the first choral strophe is a cry of pain ‘Dies irae’ reduced to a dissonance on the second; between it and the powerful cadential strides ‘Judex ergo cum sedebit’ the metrically and harmonically dissolved voice of Gretchen can be heard. The Evil Spirit makes use of the sustained speech tones of the words ‘Quid sum miser tunc dicturus’ for a forceful rendition of the words, ‘Ihr Antlitz wenden Verklärte von dir ab’.
In the first scene Faust is saved from death, in the form of a poisonous cup, through the Easter bells and the choir of believers. Erich Trunz writes:
Die Chöre nehmen in ihren langsamen schreitenden Kurzversen und preisenden Adjektiven etwas von Rhythmus und Sprache der mittellateinischen Hymnik ins Deutsche herüber, ähnlich wie später in den Versen bei Fausts Grablegung.40
Especially in the chorus of angels in the two last scenes from Part Two of Faust there is a certain emulation of the Latin church hymns with regard to the metrical form. Gustav Mahler appears to have felt this connection to liturgical song. He reports his long-felt desire to compose music for the Hermit’s scene and for the ‘Mater gloriosa’ ending suddenly recurred when he read the hymn, ‘Veni creator Spiritus’:
Und wie mit einem Schlage steht das Ganze vor mir, nicht nur das erste Thema sondern der ganze erste Satz und als Antwort darauf konnte ich gar nichts schöneres finden als die Goetheschen Worte in der Anachoretenszene. 41
Goethe also particularly valued this Whitsun hymn.42
In the aesthetic reflection of the liturgy in Mahler’s 8th Symphony the theme, ‘Accende lumen sensibus’, on which the fugue is based in the first movement, is brought into the coda by an isolated group of trumpets and trombones. The highlighting of this theme corresponds to the recurring words in the Whitsun liturgy about the enlightenment of the believers and the kindling of the fire of love according to the text ‘tongues of fire’, which descended on the disciples (Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2). This theme penetrates deep into the second movement of the Faust setting. It is heard as the pizzicato on the cellos and basses in the introduction, it breaks out in a new guise at the words of the Pater profundus on the power of love; in a further variant it becomes, with the choir of angels and with the hymn of Doctor Marianus, the sound space for the Mater gloriosa and becomes one with Gretchen’s prayer. Also the conclusion, marked ‘hymnlike’ by Mahler, is to be seen as a variation of this theme. The variations of the musical motif ‘Accende’ are the compositional answer to the spirit of transformation, which is prayed for in the Latin hymn, and which can be seen in the transformation of Faust.
Among the poems which can be labelled as ‘poetic requiems’ Friedrich Hebbel’s ‘Requiem’ be mentioned. As a reflection of the liturgy it is far removed from Mignon’s exequies. Mignon’s exequies have aimed at the artistic reinforcement of the relationship to the one who has died young and the return of the mourners back into life; in Hebbel’s Requiem total separation of the dead from all relation to life is envisaged (‘where there is no longer life, but only struggle of the unleashed powers’) and the liturgy is turned into an incantation against this menacing divide. The three ‘Soul, don’t forget’, correspond to the repeated ‘Dona eis requiem’ of the Requiem mass. It is not God who is invoked, but the human soul. The imperative is not meant for prayer (‘for the souls, whose memory we solemnize today’, Requiem mass) but for remembrance itself, from which the continuation of life depends. This is ‘fading life’, not eternal life that is a prey to the ‘Storm at night’ (the struggle of the unleashed forces), or that is a prey to the day of wrath (dies irae). After the death of the poet, Peter Cornelius composed the Requiem for six-part mixed choir. Siegmund von Hausegger set it for eight-part mixed choir and organ, Hugo Kauder for alto solo and double choir.43 In his setting for alto (or baritone), mixed choir and orchestra, op.144b, Max Reger had the imperative at the end ‘vergiß sie nicht, die Toten’, ‘do not forget the deceased) sung by the choir, and freely counterpointed by the solo voice, to the melody of ‘O Haupt, voll Blut und Wunden’. In this context we are reminded of the recent verse ‘Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden’ or of the same melody which is used for the song ‘Herzlich tut mich verlangen nach einem sel’gen End’. If Reger, certainly contrary to Hebbel’s intention, goes back to hymns close to the tradition of the Protestant Requiem, he is attempting to regain from Hebbel’s poem something of the religious hope from which it has been separated by the poet.
The great work of aesthetic reflection and reshaping of the liturgy is Parsifal. The disclosure of the Grail in Act One is conceived as a Eucharistic celebration, whose holy solemnity becomes clear precisely in the contrasting effects it has on the Knights of the Grail on one hand and on Amfortas on the other. What is found in the cathedral scene in Faust, the confrontation of the trespassing individual with the authority expressed in the liturgy, can here be turned into a dramaturgical principle, because the sinning individual is not granted less weight than the bearer of the liturgical office. The mgusical-technical side of this dramaturgical principle is the confrontation of chromatic and diatonic: Amfortas’s outburst follows the a cappella choir of the youths (‘Der Glaube lebt […]’) and Titural’s words, whose lapidary cadence is altered by the imperilment of the Grail. At the disclosure of the Grail the words of Christ’s enthronement are performed (choral-like) in unison by the youths, whose melody is eloquently repeated by the oboes and trumpets; at the communal meal, the communion, antiphons of the boys, youths and knights ring out, crowned by a canonical a cappella phrase of the Grail theme sung by all. In Act Three several liturgical acts are brought together: the anointing as bestowal of the ‘royal priesthood’ (1, Pt 2: 9), Kundry’s baptism and finally the meeting of two processions in the hall of the Holy Grail: on the one hand the official escort for Titurel, on the other hand the advent ritual for the Grail and for Amfortas. The antiphonal song of both processions forms the memorial ceremony for Titural. These exequies, in Gurnemanz’s words, ‘the requiem of my dear Lord’, evince in their textual form a certain parallelism to Mignon’s exequies.44 The processional song with Amfortas’s ‘Wen berget ihr im düst’ren Schrein’ corresponds to the choir’s ‘Wen bringt ihr uns zur stillen Gesellschaft’; the processional song with Titurel’s corpse, ‘Es birgt den Helden der Trauerschrein’ corresponds to the youths’ response in the exequies: ‘Einen müden Gespielen’. The underlying structural line in the antiphons is artfully recast through chromatic turns in the voice and correspondingly complicated harmonic relationships. This chromaticization of what is by its nature artless melody is suggested by the context, which lets us perceive the procession with the Grail and Amfortas, together with Titurel, as a last journey. In the setting of the first procession a quasi-ostinato striding figure (b minor) goes over into the Grail motif (F flat major = D major), whereby the impression of a shift from b minor to A major occcurs (which goes through G flat minor which is established as f sharp minor). In the second procession, introduced by the bell motif, the first line modulates from B flat minor to B minor. The motifs from the first movement can already be heard, while the second movement concludes its line. These motifs then form a true ostinato, which leads to extraordinarily dissonant sounds. Correspondingly, the second procession deals with the bell motif, which now carries the warning for the guardian of the Grail.
The radiations we have presented of an impressive scene in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre certainly belong to no unified context. Perhaps they confirm, precisely in their individuality, how an aesthetic reflection of the liturgy was able to influence and define the composer’s consciousness. Ernst Krenek remarked of Goethe’s meaning for the musicians:
Gewiß hat der Musiker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts fachliche Belehrung wie professionelle Begeisterung aus dem Schaffen eines Beethoven und Schubert empfangen; aber den Horizont, in den er sein Tun plazierte, die Bezogenheit, in der er es selbst reflektierend zu erblicken suchte, die Deutung seines künstlerischen Verhaltens mochte er, wenn ihn Verlangen danach ankam, viel eher aus Goethe gewinnen..45
Footnotes
1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre [referred to in further references as Lehrjahre with the page number] in Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 volumes, ed. Erich Trunz, special Munich edition [referred to as HA with volume and page numbers], vol.7, p.578.
2 Wolfgang Reich, Threnodiae sacrae. Beerdigungskompositionen aus gedruckten Leichenpredigten des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Das Erbe deutscher Musik, 79 (Wiesbaden, 1975).
3 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Ästhetik, ed. by Friedrich Bassenge (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), 1, p.165: ‘Was in der Natur vorübereilt, befestigt die Kunst zur Dauer’. Vom ‘Saal der Vergangenheit’ mit seinen Bogen und Pfeilern, Sarkophagen und Gefäßen, Einfassungen und Gemälden, heißt es, daß der Eintretende ‘durch die zusammentreffende Kunst erst erfuhr, was der Mensch sei und was er sein könne’ (Lehrjahre, p.540). ‘Whatever rushes by in nature is made permanent in art. Of the “Hall of the Past” with its vaults and pillars, sarcophagi and vessels, frames and paintings, it is said that the one who enters it “discovers, through the coinciding arts, for the first time, what man is and what he can be” ’.
4 Lehrjahre, p.540 ‘in pure architectonic relationships’.
5 ibid., pp.540 and 541. ‘Nothing is ephemeral’, says Wilhelm, ‘but the one who enjoys and sees’.
6 ibid., p.577. ‘Draw near, my friends, and observe the wonders of art and artiface.’
7 ibid., p.576f. ‘could not stop her spirit from departing’.
8 ibid., p.578. ‘here in marble it rests, unconsumed’ […] also in your hearts it lives and works’. ‘Der Saal der Vergangenheit ist mit Emporen ausgestattet, auf denen “die Chöre der Sänger verborgen stehen.” ’ ‘The “Hall of the Past” is equipped with a gallery, in which “the chorus of singers stand concealed” ’ (Lehrjahre, p.542f.).
9 Hegel, Ästhetik, vol.1, p.346f and p.503.
10 HA 9, p.316f. ‘We were particularly charmed by the beautiful idea that the ancients acknowledged Death as the brother of Sleep and depicted both so identically, as befits twins, that they are easily confused. Only now could we really celebrate the triumph of beauty […] and in the realm of art, relegate ugliness of every kind, which is in any case not to be driven out of the world, to the level of the laughable.’
11 Lehrjahre, p.540. On a splendid sarcophagus is the picture of the Uncle, in which he who has established the hall of the past holds up a scroll in such a way that one can comfortably read the words ‘Gedenke zu leben’, ‘Remember to live’.
12 HA 2, p.504. ‘For both death becomes life.’
13 See Erich Trunz’s commentary, HA 3, p.692.
14 Lehrjahre, p.575. ‘[…] May there dwell in you the formative power, that carries what is finest, loveliest in life, up beyond the stars.’
15 Johann Gottfried Herder: Kalligone (1800) in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin, 1877ff), 22, p.308. ‘the tendency […] to cultivate humanity to its full potential’.
16 Compare Trunz in HA 4, p.665f. and p.668; according to Trunz, rhythmic prose is accounted for much more in the 1800s, for example, Klopstock, Der Tod Adams (1757), Geßner Idyllen (1756) and Goethe’s Ossian translation in Werther (HA 6, 108, 5ff.).
17 Only to name the most famous: the Funeral Motets and the Canticum Simeonis in Heinrich Schütz Musikalischen Exequien, Motets from the Altbach Archive (ed. Max Schneider as vol. 1 in the series Erbe deutscher Musik, Leipzig 1935) and J.S.Bach’s Motets BWV 225, 226, 228 and 229. See also in the above-named volume (footnote 2) the compositions of Sebastien Knüpfer (Nr.27), Johann Schelle (Nr. 28) and Andreas Scharmann (Nr.30, in this funeral lament the second choir is accompanied by a violin ensemble).
18 Anders Ekenberg, Cur cantatur? Die Funktionen des liturgischen Gesanges nach den Autoren der Karolingerzeit (Stockholm, 1987), chapter 4B.
19 ‘Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele’, in: Lehrjahre, p.410. ‘He had then’, according to Goethe, ‘four-and eight-part motets performed by the same choir, now increased in size and profiting from further practice, and this, I may well say, gave us all a foretaste of heaven.’ The passage continues, ‘Ich hatte bisher nur den frommen Gesang gekannt, in welchem gute Seelen oft mit heiserer Kehle, wie die Waldvöglein Gott zu loben glauben, weil sie sich selbst eine angenehme Empfindung machen; dann die eitle Musik der Konzerte, in denen man allenfalls zur Bewunderung eines Talents, selten aber auch nur zu einem vorübergehenden Vergnügen hingerissen wird. Nun vernahm ich eine Musik, aus dem tiefsten Sinne der trefflichsten menschlichen Naturen entsprungen, die durch bestimmte und geübte Organe in harmonischer Einheit wieder zum tiefsten, besten Sinne des Menschen sprach und ihn wirklich in diesem Augenblicke seine Gottähnlichkeit lebhaft empfinden ließ. Alles waren lateinische geistliche Gesänge, die sich wie Juwelen in dem goldenen Ringe einer gesitteten weltlichen Gesellschaft ausnahmen und mich, ohne Anforderung einer sogenannten Erbauung auf das geistigste erhoben und glücklich machten.’ ‘So far I had only been acquainted with hymn-singing, in which pious souls, often with hoarse throats, believe they are like birds of the forest singing praises to God, because of the pleasant feeling it gives them, or with the vanity of concert music that provokes admiration for the talents of the performer, but rarely provides even passing pleasure. But now I heard music issuing from the richest depths of noble, human hearts, through practiced organs and in perfect harmony, speaking to the very best in us and making us fully aware of our godlikeness. These were sacred all religious songs in Latin which stood out like jewels in the golden ring of this cultured, secular society. I was spiritually uplifted and made happy by them, without laying any claim to so-called spiritual edification.’
20 Lehrjahre, p.578. ‘Take this holy solemnity away with you, for it is sacred, it alone transforms life into eternity’[…] ‘These words of the youths, in which the invisible choir joins, are no longer heard by those present. From the sorrow and contemplations they ‘longed to return […] to what they had left’.
21 For discussion of this ‘foretaste of Heaven’ see Zelter’s letter to Goethe, 4 May 1814. About the fulfilled moment in music: ‛Fürwahr, die Musik füllt, in jenem Betracht, den Augenblick am entschiedensten, es sei nun, daß sie in dem ruhigen Geiste Ehrfurcht und Anbetung errege oder die beweglichen Sinne zu tanzendem Jubel hervorrufe.’ ‘Indeed, from this point of view, music fills up the present moment more decisively than anything else, whether it awakens in the tranquil mind reverence and worship, or whether it summons the active senses to dance and celebration.’ (Goethe to Zelter, 19 October 1829). ‘Glücklicherweise ist dein Talent-Charakter auf den Ton, d.h. auf den Augenblick angewiesen. Da nun eine Folge von konsequenten Augenblicken immer eine Art von Ewigkeit selbst ist, so war dir gegeben, im Vorübergehenden stets beständig zu sein und also mir sowohl als Hegels Geist, insofern ich ihn verstehe, völlig genug zu tun.’ ‘Fortunately, your individual gift is bound up with sound, namely with the moment. Now, as a series of consecutive moments is always a kind of eternity in itself, you have been able to remain constant in the midst of what is transitory and thus to satisfy me and, in so far as I understand it, also Hegel’s spirit.’ (Goethe to Zelter, 11 March 1832).
22 Wolfgang Osthoff, ‘Zum Vorstellungsgehalt des Allegretto in Beethovens 7. Symphony’, in: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 34 (1977), pp.159-79.
23 Arnold Schering, Beethoven und die Dichtung (Berlin, 1936), interpreted the complete seventh symphony in relation to scenes from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (p.216f.), and the second movement, Allegretto, in relation to the Requiem für Mignon.
24 Osthoff, Zum Vorstellungsgehalt des Allegretto in Beethovens 7. Symphonie, with reference to Karl Nef, Die neuen Sinfonien Beethovens (Leipzig, 1928), p.218.
25 Robert Schumann, Lieder, Gesänge und Requiem für Mignon aus Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’, composed in the summer of 1849, published in 1851 as op.98a: Die Lieder Mignons, des Harfners und Philinens for solo voice with piano accompaniment, and op.98b: Requiem für Mignon for choir, soloists and orchestra.
26 For further discussion on the ‘strömende Entfaltung eines Verlaufs’, the ‘streaming development of a course’, see Friedhelm Krummacher, Requiem für Mignon: Goethes Worte in Schumanns Musik’ in: George Friedrich Händel. Ein Lebensinhalt. Gedenkschrift für Bernd Baselt (1934-1993) (Halle und Kassel, 1995), pp.261-87, esp. p.279ff.
27 Adolf Nowak, ‘Ein deutsches Requiem’ in the context of tradition, in: Friedhelm Krummacher, Wolfram Steinbeck (eds), Brahms Analysen, Kieler Schriften für Musikwissenschaft, 28 (Kassel, 1984), pp.201-209.
28 In 1867 Rossini orchestrated the mass for orchestra and it was performed in this edition in 1869 in the Théâtre Italien in Paris.
29 It corresponds to Goethe’s expectation, that the composer could change a prose text into ‘lied-like’ settings; in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre he says of the relationship of the musician to the rhythm of a poem: ‘nach Belieben zerstört dieser [der Musiker] das gewissenhafteste Verfahren des Rhythmikers, ja verwandelt sogar Prosa in Gesang, wo dann die wunderbarsten Möglichkeiten hervortreten.’ ‘[The musician] destroys at will the most painstakingly constructed rhythm of a work; he even transmutes prose into song, where the most wonderful possibilities then emerge […]’, HA 8, p.248.
30 Between Rubinstein’s and Max Bruch’s settings two more should be mentioned: Theodor Streicher, Mignons Exequien for mixed choir, children’s choir and orchestra, 1907, and Karl Beyle, Mignons Beisetzung for mixed choir, boys voices and large orchestra, op.11, 1909.
31 HA 7, p.574. ‘Take this holy solemnity away with you, for it is sacred, it alone transforms life into eternity.’
32 Max Bruch’s Trauerfeier für Mignon, op.93. ‘If a stage or choral company realize Goethe’s intention of a scenic performance of the ‘Exequien für Mignon’, it would be best if the four boys with the sarcophagus stand in the middle of the stage and the two choirs are hidden to the right and left.’
33 ‘Look at the powerful wings.’ ‘Look up with the eyes of the spirit.’ ‘May there dwell in you the formative power.’ ‘Take this holy solemnity with you.’ ‘And may love dressed in pure robes of beauty meet you with its divine gaze.’
34 Lehrjahre, p.576. ‘Fixed laws govern our entry into life, the days that prepare us to face the light of day are numbered; but there is no law regarding length of life.’
35 ibid. ‘This tender affection and her intense gratitude seemed to be the flame that consumed the oil of her life.’ See also the doctor in Chapter Three: ‘Die sonderbare Natur des guten Kindes […] besteht beinah nur aus einer tiefen Sehnsucht; das Verlangen, ihr Vaterland wiederzusehen, uund das Verlangen nach Ihnen, mein Freund, ist, möchte ich fast sagen, das einzige Irdische an ihr; beides greift nur in eine unendliche Ferne, beide Gegenstände liegen unerreichbar vor diesem einzigen Gemüt.’ ‘The strange personality of the dear child […] consists almost entirely of a deep yearning: the longing to see her motherland again, and a longing, my friend, for you – these, I may say, are the only earthly things about her, and in both cases she is reaching into the infinite distance; both goals are inaccessible to this singular nature.’
36 Adolf Nowak, ‘Beethoven, ‘Elegischer Gesang’ for four voices and string quartet, op.118 in Albrecht Riethmüller, Carl Dahlhaus, Alexander L. Ringer (ed.), Beethoven. Interpretationen seiner Werke , II (Laaber, 1994), pp.202-205.
37 Klaus Blum, Hundert Jahre Ein deutsches Requiem von Johannes Brahms (Tutzing, 1971), pp.26 and 95f.
38 ibid., p.35. ‘for the Christian consciousness, the point around which everything rotates, namely the redemption through the death of the Lord’, is missing […]’. And Brahms answered that he ‘knowingly and willingly […] did without verses like that of John the Evangelist, Chapter 3, verse 16’.
39 ibid., p.126. ‘in the prevalence of the reflexive lyrical element, in the magical sound effects of the instrumentation.’
40 HA 3, p.525. ‘In their slow striding short verses and praising adjectives the chorus take over something from the rhythm and speech of middle-Latin hymns in German, akin to the verses at Faust’s burial later on.’
41 ‘And with one fell swoop, the whole composition stood before me, not only the first theme but the whole of the first movement, and as an answer I could find nothing more beautiful than the Goethean words in the Hermit’s scene.’ The Mahler quotation cited here is from Karl-Josef Müller, Mahler. Leben – Werke – Dokumente (Mainz and Munich, 1988), p.328.
42. Goethe on the hymn: ‘Der herrliche Kirchengesang, Veni creator spiritus, ist eigentlich ein Appell ans Genie; deswegen er auch geist- und kraftreiche Menschen gewaltig anspricht’ (Maximen und Reflexionen, HA 12, p.472). ‘The glorious hymn, ‘Veni creator spiritus’, is actually an appeal to genius; therefore it speaks tremendously to spiritual and strong people.’
43 For further settings see Adolf Stübing, Friedrich Hebbel in der Musik (Berlin, 1913), pp.280-303.
44 In the discussion of the paper (Frankfurt/Main, 1999) Dr Kienzle has pointed out the relationship between Wagner’s text and Goethe’s.
45 Ernst Krenek, ‘Erinnerung an Karl Kraus (1936)’, in: ‘Zur Sprache gebracht’. Essays über Musik (München, 1958), p.230f. ‘Certainly the nineteenth-century musician had gained technical instruction and professional enthusiasm from the works of Beethoven and Schubert; but the horizon in which he placed his activity, the context in which, when he reflected on it, he tried to see it, the understanding of his artistic stance, he would, if the desire for it arose in him, much sooner take from Goethe.’