Apocalypse Now
Franz Schmidt's 'The Book with Seven Seals',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
On an evening with a heavy snow storm, which is very unusual in Rome, about a thousand music lovers challenged the bad weather, by bus, taxi and even on foot, reaching the Sala Cecilia of the Parco della Musica to listen to a rare two hour oratorio with no intermission. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln ('The Book with Seven Seals') by Franz Schmidt had previously been performed in Italy only once: in 2003 at Pisa for the 'Anima Mundi' religious music festival. In 1957, however, there had been a private performance in the Holy See -- the Vatican State -- for the Pope and his guests. There are two good recordings of the oratorio, but they are hard to find in Italian stores. Thus, very few of the stern and courageous music lovers knew what they were going to listen to. The oratorio is seldom performed in most countries, with the exception of the German-Austrian area. In the United Kingdom, for instance, it had its premiere on 24 May 1966 conducted by Bryan Fairfax, and it was revived on 24 August 2000 at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. [Read Roderic Dunnett's interview with the conductor on that occasion, Franz Welser-Möst..] 'Prof Google' discovered a US premiere at the Chicago Grant Park Festival in August 2011 and in November 2002 a successful performance at a Dutch Festival. There is no record of performances in France even though the French have a flair for modern oratorio music. On 11 February 2012, I was among those who braved the snow and the ice. Although the Sala Santa Cecilia has 2,832 seats, many subscribers had also stayed at home because a decree from Rome's Mayor had forbidden the use of cars without snow tyres; very few Romans own such tyres because January 1985 was the last time there was any serious snow in Italy's capital. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln was very well worth the trip.
The auditorium in a snow storm during the concert on 11 February 2012. Click on the image for higher resolution
Franz Schmidt is not a well known composer. He was born in 1874 in a part of the Austrian Empire that at that time was Hungary and now is Slovakia. His family belonged to the middle class. Many were musicians. As their work opportunities and incomes declined, they decided to move to Vienna. Franz Schmidt was admitted to the conservatory and became the first cellist of the State Opera where he worked under Mahler; they never had a good personal relationship, but Mahler did appreciate his skills and utilized him often as a virtuoso soloist. Then Schmidt won a competition for a teaching position in the Conservatory where he moved up the ranks to become the Director and a very influential personality on the Vienna music scene. Schoenberg, Berg and many others of the 'Vienna School' have been students or fellow teachers of his; he had the reputation of being an excellent teacher. His private life was not happy; his wife had mental problems and was confined to an asylum (and later killed by the Nazis as part of their euthanasia program for the handicapped). His beloved daughter died young and suddenly. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, an opera of his -- Notre Dame, based on Victor Hugo's novel -- had a good degree of success, in spite of rather strong opposition by Mahler, and it circulated in Austria, Germany and elsewhere. Then, his Symphony No 4, written as a memorial to his daughter, received praise from critics and audience. Although he lived in Vienna and most of his friends were Jews involved in developing atonal music and the twelve note row system, his model was Bruckner. Also, he was a good practicing Roman Catholic, just like Bruckner.
Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln was his crowning achievement. It was premiered on 15 June 1938, just a few weeks after the Anschluss (Austria's incorporation in the Third Reich) in the Golden Hall of Vienna Musikverein at a gala for the fiftieth anniversary of Vienna Friends of Music Association. It was a tremendous success, after which the authorities commissioned him to write a 'cantata' for 'German Resurrection'. Schmidt had no time for the Nazis. Not only did he never complete the 'cantata', devoting his remaining energies to a quintet (he died on 11 February 1939) but, as Oskar Adler recalls, he had helped many Jewish musicians to cross the borders with Switzerland. More significantly, in his book The Symphony (Oxford University Press, 1995), Michael Steinberg remembers that Schmidt had assigned Israel Brandman's Variations on a Jewish Theme to a team of his students clearly oriented toward National Socialism; they asked him, kindly but firmly, to select a different exercise.
The oratorio is a setting of passages from the Book of Revelation. Schmidt had suffered through World War I and his choice was almost prophetic: with hindsight the work appears to foretell, in the most powerful terms, the disasters that were shortly to be upon Europe in the Second World War. Here his invention rises to a sustained pitch of genius. A narrative upon the text of the oratorio was provided by the composer himself. Schmidt's oratorio stands in the Austro-German tradition stretching back to the time of J S Bach; Handel had been the first to write an oratorio fully on the subject of the Book of Revelation (as opposed to a Last Judgment in a Requiem like that of Verdi). Far from glorifying its subject, it is a mystical contemplation, a horrified warning, and a prayer for salvation. Schmidt opted for the Martin Luther translation that he himself adapted as a libretto. Thus, the oratorio has an ecumenical flair and sounds as a damnation of any evil (including, of course, the Nazi evil). It is possible that the Nazi authorities fully grasped this, but they had a rather complex interaction with the Christian intellectuals; Schmidt was too authoritative in Vienna -- and too ill because of heart failures -- to try to oppose him. Rather, they attempted to entice him by offering him a well-paid commission that if completed could have been presented as his accession to their ranks.
Leopold Hager conducting Franz Schmidt's 'The Book with Seven Seals'. Photo © 2012 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
Fabio Luisi was originally meant to be the conductor in Rome on 11 February 2012 but, due to his work at the Metropolitan Opera (where he is replacing James Levine), Leopold Hager had the baton. He is a well-experienced Salzburg born conductor who has headed the Vienna Volksoper for several years. He is quite versatile in opera conducting but has a special flair for twentieth century music. He provided grandiose, solemn musical direction to the large orchestra, an organist as soloist and six singers, of whom two had specific roles (St John and the voice of the Almighty) and the others took various characters (from the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to minor parts). St John's role is especially taxing: it requires a very high texture, a sophisticated legato and singing almost throughout the full oratorio. The part was taken by Herbert Lippert, a favorite tenor of Georg Solti and Wolfgang Sawallisch, with experience in both Mozart's and Wagner's roles as well as Haydn's oratorios (especially The Creation). His very high class was clear from the Prologue where, as narrator, he opens with words of devotion to God the eternal, and to Christ the redeemer. In the Prologue, his main counterpart is Günther Groissböck, a slender Austrian with a very deep voice. His other counterpart is the chorus directed by Ciro Visco -- a true protagonist of the oratorio.
The first part concerns the opening of the first six seals of the book, and tells the history of mankind and of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Here the other soloists -- Maureen McKay, Stephanie Atanasov, Timothy Oliver and Jacques-Greg Belobo, a truly intercontinental cast -- come into play. The score gets tense during the fight between the Devil and his followers, on the one hand, and the Saints and the Martyrs, on the other; the musical tint darkens as we approach the Day of Anger where counterpoint prevails.
Soloists with members of the Coro dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Franz Schmidt's 'The Book with Seven Seals'. Photo © 2012 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
The second part opens with a climactic organ passage introducing a long narrative for John with orchestra. At the opening of the seventh seal, he describes a great silence in heaven. The ensuing narrative is an allegory for the history of the true believers and their Church until they reach the peace of heaven. John tells that seven angels appear and are given trumpets. Each sounding signifies great sorrows upon the world and its people. The soloists announce the woes, building from alto through to quartet: a rain of blood and fire (punishment for the sins of mankind, responds the chorus); a glowing mountain appears in the sea, all the ships founder, and all lives are lost in the sea and the water is turned to blood (response: Great God, your judgments are righteous); the star falls to earth, and poisons all waters, and whoever drinks it, dies (response: Lord, your punishment is truly righteous); Woe to you, sun moon and stars are lost!, sings the quartet of solo voices. The fifth and sixth blasts and their woes are entirely sung by the chorus: the plague of locusts devouring the people, and the armies of riders seeking out and slaying people. Then, the chorus sings that God rules the world and mankind praises God (with a quadruple fugue). John then narrates that earth and heaven disappear before the face of He who sits on the throne, and the sea and Hell give up their dead, and all the dead stand before the throne, and another book, the Book of Life, is opened. Those whose names are not found written there, shall be thrown into the sea of fire. John sees a new heaven and a new earth, and all those whose names are written in the Book of Life go there to have eternal life. The voice of God speaks, saying that He is the Alpha and the Omega and will give to them the water of life, and they will become His people, and He will wipe away their tears, and there shall be no more death nor sorrow. Behold, He makes all things new. The final movement is an ecstatic Hallelujah chorus), in which the choir sings praises to God, followed by a subdued male chorus of thanksgiving on three notes, in the manner of plainchant. Introduced by a light fanfare as at the opening, John makes his final declaration, that all this was the revelation given to him, and was the sacred exposition of the prophets. The chorus sings 'Amen'!
Leopold Hager conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Franz Schmidt's 'The Book with Seven Seals'. Photo © 2012 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
At the end the audience applauded for nearly fifteen minutes.
Most likely, the oratorio disappeared from the repertory because after World War II it was considered 'dated'- like quite a few compositions by Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger or Max von Schillings. It did not fit the European atonal or twelve note row systems, or the American neo-romantic or minimalist approaches, or the new waves of live electronics and electro-acoustics.
Let's hope that Schmidt's work will gain a new lease of artistic life.
Copyright © 21 February 2012 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
FRANZ SCHMIDT
ROME
ITALY
CHORAL MUSIC
AUSTRIA
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Apocalypse Now
Franz Schmidt's 'The Book with Seven Seals',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
On an evening with a heavy snow storm, which is very unusual in Rome, about a thousand music lovers challenged the bad weather, by bus, taxi and even on foot, reaching the Sala Cecilia of the Parco della Musica to listen to a rare two hour oratorio with no intermission. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln ('The Book with Seven Seals') by Franz Schmidt had previously been performed in Italy only once: in 2003 at Pisa for the 'Anima Mundi' religious music festival. In 1957, however, there had been a private performance in the Holy See -- the Vatican State -- for the Pope and his guests. There are two good recordings of the oratorio, but they are hard to find in Italian stores. Thus, very few of the stern and courageous music lovers knew what they were going to listen to. The oratorio is seldom performed in most countries, with the exception of the German-Austrian area. In the United Kingdom, for instance, it had its premiere on 24 May 1966 conducted by Bryan Fairfax, and it was revived on 24 August 2000 at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. [Read Roderic Dunnett's interview with the conductor on that occasion, Franz Welser-Möst..] 'Prof Google' discovered a US premiere at the Chicago Grant Park Festival in August 2011 and in November 2002 a successful performance at a Dutch Festival. There is no record of performances in France even though the French have a flair for modern oratorio music. On 11 February 2012, I was among those who braved the snow and the ice. Although the Sala Santa Cecilia has 2,832 seats, many subscribers had also stayed at home because a decree from Rome's Mayor had forbidden the use of cars without snow tyres; very few Romans own such tyres because January 1985 was the last time there was any serious snow in Italy's capital. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln was very well worth the trip.
The auditorium in a snow storm during the concert on 11 February 2012. Click on the image for higher resolution
Franz Schmidt is not a well known composer. He was born in 1874 in a part of the Austrian Empire that at that time was Hungary and now is Slovakia. His family belonged to the middle class. Many were musicians. As their work opportunities and incomes declined, they decided to move to Vienna. Franz Schmidt was admitted to the conservatory and became the first cellist of the State Opera where he worked under Mahler; they never had a good personal relationship, but Mahler did appreciate his skills and utilized him often as a virtuoso soloist. Then Schmidt won a competition for a teaching position in the Conservatory where he moved up the ranks to become the Director and a very influential personality on the Vienna music scene. Schoenberg, Berg and many others of the 'Vienna School' have been students or fellow teachers of his; he had the reputation of being an excellent teacher. His private life was not happy; his wife had mental problems and was confined to an asylum (and later killed by the Nazis as part of their euthanasia program for the handicapped). His beloved daughter died young and suddenly. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, an opera of his -- Notre Dame, based on Victor Hugo's novel -- had a good degree of success, in spite of rather strong opposition by Mahler, and it circulated in Austria, Germany and elsewhere. Then, his Symphony No 4, written as a memorial to his daughter, received praise from critics and audience. Although he lived in Vienna and most of his friends were Jews involved in developing atonal music and the twelve note row system, his model was Bruckner. Also, he was a good practicing Roman Catholic, just like Bruckner.
Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln was his crowning achievement. It was premiered on 15 June 1938, just a few weeks after the Anschluss (Austria's incorporation in the Third Reich) in the Golden Hall of Vienna Musikverein at a gala for the fiftieth anniversary of Vienna Friends of Music Association. It was a tremendous success, after which the authorities commissioned him to write a 'cantata' for 'German Resurrection'. Schmidt had no time for the Nazis. Not only did he never complete the 'cantata', devoting his remaining energies to a quintet (he died on 11 February 1939) but, as Oskar Adler recalls, he had helped many Jewish musicians to cross the borders with Switzerland. More significantly, in his book The Symphony (Oxford University Press, 1995), Michael Steinberg remembers that Schmidt had assigned Israel Brandman's Variations on a Jewish Theme to a team of his students clearly oriented toward National Socialism; they asked him, kindly but firmly, to select a different exercise.
The oratorio is a setting of passages from the Book of Revelation. Schmidt had suffered through World War I and his choice was almost prophetic: with hindsight the work appears to foretell, in the most powerful terms, the disasters that were shortly to be upon Europe in the Second World War. Here his invention rises to a sustained pitch of genius. A narrative upon the text of the oratorio was provided by the composer himself. Schmidt's oratorio stands in the Austro-German tradition stretching back to the time of J S Bach; Handel had been the first to write an oratorio fully on the subject of the Book of Revelation (as opposed to a Last Judgment in a Requiem like that of Verdi). Far from glorifying its subject, it is a mystical contemplation, a horrified warning, and a prayer for salvation. Schmidt opted for the Martin Luther translation that he himself adapted as a libretto. Thus, the oratorio has an ecumenical flair and sounds as a damnation of any evil (including, of course, the Nazi evil). It is possible that the Nazi authorities fully grasped this, but they had a rather complex interaction with the Christian intellectuals; Schmidt was too authoritative in Vienna -- and too ill because of heart failures -- to try to oppose him. Rather, they attempted to entice him by offering him a well-paid commission that if completed could have been presented as his accession to their ranks.
Leopold Hager conducting Franz Schmidt's 'The Book with Seven Seals'. Photo © 2012 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
Fabio Luisi was originally meant to be the conductor in Rome on 11 February 2012 but, due to his work at the Metropolitan Opera (where he is replacing James Levine), Leopold Hager had the baton. He is a well-experienced Salzburg born conductor who has headed the Vienna Volksoper for several years. He is quite versatile in opera conducting but has a special flair for twentieth century music. He provided grandiose, solemn musical direction to the large orchestra, an organist as soloist and six singers, of whom two had specific roles (St John and the voice of the Almighty) and the others took various characters (from the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to minor parts). St John's role is especially taxing: it requires a very high texture, a sophisticated legato and singing almost throughout the full oratorio. The part was taken by Herbert Lippert, a favorite tenor of Georg Solti and Wolfgang Sawallisch, with experience in both Mozart's and Wagner's roles as well as Haydn's oratorios (especially The Creation). His very high class was clear from the Prologue where, as narrator, he opens with words of devotion to God the eternal, and to Christ the redeemer. In the Prologue, his main counterpart is Günther Groissböck, a slender Austrian with a very deep voice. His other counterpart is the chorus directed by Ciro Visco -- a true protagonist of the oratorio.
The first part concerns the opening of the first six seals of the book, and tells the history of mankind and of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Here the other soloists -- Maureen McKay, Stephanie Atanasov, Timothy Oliver and Jacques-Greg Belobo, a truly intercontinental cast -- come into play. The score gets tense during the fight between the Devil and his followers, on the one hand, and the Saints and the Martyrs, on the other; the musical tint darkens as we approach the Day of Anger where counterpoint prevails.
Soloists with members of the Coro dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Franz Schmidt's 'The Book with Seven Seals'. Photo © 2012 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
The second part opens with a climactic organ passage introducing a long narrative for John with orchestra. At the opening of the seventh seal, he describes a great silence in heaven. The ensuing narrative is an allegory for the history of the true believers and their Church until they reach the peace of heaven. John tells that seven angels appear and are given trumpets. Each sounding signifies great sorrows upon the world and its people. The soloists announce the woes, building from alto through to quartet: a rain of blood and fire (punishment for the sins of mankind, responds the chorus); a glowing mountain appears in the sea, all the ships founder, and all lives are lost in the sea and the water is turned to blood (response: Great God, your judgments are righteous); the star falls to earth, and poisons all waters, and whoever drinks it, dies (response: Lord, your punishment is truly righteous); Woe to you, sun moon and stars are lost!, sings the quartet of solo voices. The fifth and sixth blasts and their woes are entirely sung by the chorus: the plague of locusts devouring the people, and the armies of riders seeking out and slaying people. Then, the chorus sings that God rules the world and mankind praises God (with a quadruple fugue). John then narrates that earth and heaven disappear before the face of He who sits on the throne, and the sea and Hell give up their dead, and all the dead stand before the throne, and another book, the Book of Life, is opened. Those whose names are not found written there, shall be thrown into the sea of fire. John sees a new heaven and a new earth, and all those whose names are written in the Book of Life go there to have eternal life. The voice of God speaks, saying that He is the Alpha and the Omega and will give to them the water of life, and they will become His people, and He will wipe away their tears, and there shall be no more death nor sorrow. Behold, He makes all things new. The final movement is an ecstatic Hallelujah chorus), in which the choir sings praises to God, followed by a subdued male chorus of thanksgiving on three notes, in the manner of plainchant. Introduced by a light fanfare as at the opening, John makes his final declaration, that all this was the revelation given to him, and was the sacred exposition of the prophets. The chorus sings 'Amen'!
Leopold Hager conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Franz Schmidt's 'The Book with Seven Seals'. Photo © 2012 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
At the end the audience applauded for nearly fifteen minutes.
Most likely, the oratorio disappeared from the repertory because after World War II it was considered 'dated'- like quite a few compositions by Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger or Max von Schillings. It did not fit the European atonal or twelve note row systems, or the American neo-romantic or minimalist approaches, or the new waves of live electronics and electro-acoustics.
Let's hope that Schmidt's work will gain a new lease of artistic life.
Copyright © 21 February 2012 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
FRANZ SCHMIDT
ROME
ITALY
CHORAL MUSIC
AUSTRIA
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