Can One Find a Cause for Joy in a Pandemic? Bach's Cantata # 140

Classical music is often slandered as "snobbish, elitist, and over the people's heads". Nothing could be further from the truth. One extremely important aspect of the Classical Principle in music, is that it always engages popular music, and elevates it to an unimagined level of beauty, through what the composer Dvorak called the "full cavalry" of classical symphonic, vocal, polyphonic, poetic, and harmonic resources. Bach, for example, is often slandered as an elitist, composing only for the court, which had the education to appreciate advanced counterpoint such as fugue. This is even further from the truth. (Ft1)

Bach sought to uplift every hymn known to the Lutheran Church. When we hear a known hymn set by him in advanced counterpoint, such as fugue, we discover that, with a little work, such counterpoint is indeed the very best way to reveal the hidden qualities of that hymn, as we shall see.

Bach composed his Cantata #140, "Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme" in 1731 (known in English as "Sleepers awake, for night is flying".) One hundred and thirty-two years earlier, in 1599, Phillip Nicolai composed the words and melody for that hymn.

He composed it at a time when the plague was striking hard in his area. It may seem incongruous to compose such exuberant music in the middle of a pandemic, but Nicolai wrote it as part of a larger text called: " A Mirror of Joy in the Eternal Life", in which he said:

“Day by day I wrote out my meditations, found myself, thank God, wonderfully well, comforted in heart, joyful in spirit, and truly content; gave to my manuscript the name and title of a Mirror of Joy... to leave behind me (if God should call me from this world) as a token of my peaceful, joyful, Christian departure, or (if God should spare me in health) to comfort other sufferers whom He should also visit with the pestilence.”

For Nicholai, joy was a mirror image. If he died of the plague, he could rejoice in leaving an inspiring body of work behind. If he did not, he could take joy in continuing to comfort the sick.

Our society recently experienced such a plague. The modern image of Nicholai's simple comforting of the sick, might be to take joy in correcting the errors that led to the pandemic, so that it might never happen again! Sadly, that still remains to be done. In any case, the message is clear: one can always find a wellspring of joy, in any situation, if you locate the essence of your life, not as a victim, but in using your creative abilities to fulfill a mission on behalf of humanity.

Nicolai did not create the music out of nowhere. It has precedents in "in Dulci Jubilo", and "Silberweise" by Mastersinger Hans Sachs (German Meistersinger, poet, playwright, and shoemaker, 1494-1576).

Silberweise

https://youtu.be/3N_hvyyl6nw

Bach stuck very closely to Nicolai's text and melody, as well as his Biblical inspirations.

In a Theme and Variations, the composer starts out with the unadorned simple theme. The variations then grow in complexity. Bach does the opposite. The final stanza of the poem, which becomes the final movement of the Cantata, is set by Bach as a simple 4- voice chorale. Though Bach's Chorales are famed for being, to this day, unsurpassed, it is still his most elementary setting of the melody.

We will examine the Cantata backwards. The Cantata ends with this 4-voiced setting of the final verse. Hear it at the end as Wachet 3.

3. Gloria sei dir gesungen

May gloria be sung to you

Mit Menschen- und englischen Zungen,

with the tongues of men and angels,

Mit Harfen und mit Zimbeln schon.

with harps and with cymbals.

Von zwölf Perlen sind die Pforten,

The gates are made of twelve pearls,

An deiner Stadt sind wir Konsorten

in your city we are companions

Der Engel hoch um deinen Thron.

of the angels on high around your throne.

Kein Aug hat je gespürt,

No eye has ever perceived,

Kein Ohr hat je gehört

no ear has ever heard

Solche Freude.

such joy.

Des sind wir froh,

Therefore we are joyful,

Io, io!

hurray, hurray!

Ewig in dulci jubilo.

for ever in sweet rejoicing.

The Fourth movement of the Cantata features a beautiful new melody in the strings. That melody is soon joined by a tenor rendition of the main theme, on the text of a middle stanza of the poem. Her at the end as Wachet 2.

2. Zion hört die Wächter singen,

Zion hears the watchmen sing,

Das Herz tut ihr vor Freuden springen,

her heart leaps for joy,

Sie wachet und steht eilend auf.

she awakes and gets up in haste.

Ihr Freund kommt vom Himmel prächtig,

Her friend comes from heaven in his splendour,

Von Gnaden stark, von Wahrheit mächtig,

strong in mercy, mighty in truth.

Ihr Licht wird hell, ihr Stern geht auf.

Her light becomes bright, her star rises.

Nun komm, du werte Kron,

Now come, you worthy crown,

Herr Jesu, Gottes Sohn!

Lord Jesus, God's son!

Hosianna!

Hosanna!

Wir folgen all

We all follow

Zum Freudensaal

to the hall of joy

Und halten mit das Abendmahl.

and share in the Lord's supper.

If the beautiful new melody in the strings is examined closely, you will see that it derives from various motives in the song itself.

Bach saves the most difficult for first. What? This is, after all, a song the congregation has known for more than a century, and has sung quite often. The challenge is to hear it, or maybe softly sing along with it, as it unfolds slowly in the soprano voice. Try it! If you don't get it at first, try again. Hear it on Wachet 1

1. Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme

Wake up, the voice calls us

Der Wächter sehr hoch auf der Zinne,

of the watchmen high up on the battlements,

Wach auf, du Stadt Jerusalem!

wake up, you city of Jerusalem!

Mitternacht heißt diese Stunde;

This hour is called midnight;

Sie rufen uns mit hellem Munde:

they call us with a clear voice:

Wo seid ihr klugen Jungfrauen?

where are you, wise virgins ?

Wohl auf, der Bräutgam kömmt;

Get up, the bridegroom comes;

Steht auf, die Lampen nehmt! Alleluja!

Stand up, take your lamps! Hallelujah!

Macht euch bereit

Make yourselves ready

Zu der Hochzeit,

for the wedding,

The other four movements of the Cantata elaborate on Nicolai's theme of the parable of the Ten Virgins. The Cantata is a through-composed pedagogy in both musical and philosophical development. The effect at the end should be to make the listener want to hear the entire thing again..

We used an older recording, since our modern versions lack the majesty proper to the piece. However, we include a newer version for you to compare and make up your own minds. We said at one point that advanced counterpoint was the best way to reveal the hidden values of a hymn. That is because it corresponds to how the mind works. Humans don’t think in a linear way, one word at a time. We bounce different thoughts off one another, some moving slowly, some faster. We measure them against the past, as we contemplate the future, with both converging on the present.

The Thomaskirche in Leipzig was one of the greatest educational institutions ever, with elites and ordinary people learning from the great Bach.

Ft 1. The French enlightenment contributed to the removal of Bach's memory after his death. Jean Jacques Rameau, who was a trained musician, wanted to simplify music, and "bring it down to the people's level", with simple melody and accompaniment. Advanced counterpoint bothered him. "Playing two melodies at the same time for the sake of clarity, is like making two speeches at the same time for the sake of clarity", said he. Here is some of his boring music.

https://youtu.be/hHhf4TEc6FI

Here are the three movements using Nicolai's "Wachet auf" melody in Bach's Cantata # 140. They are movements 7 , 4 and 1.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/724p7o7a57h78la/wachet3.wav?dl=0

Here is another older recording from 1977 of movement 4:

https://youtu.be/__lCZeePG48

Here’s a newer performance by Bach society of Netherlands:

https://youtu.be/DqZE54i-muE

Antonin Dvorak and the Real Meaning of Independence Day

This past July 4th weekend was a joyous one, the first to be free of Covid lockdowns. It is now, however, time to go "beyond burgers", and restore the deeper reasons for which we celebrate the occasion.

What is America? Is it a set of states? A territory bounded with borders? A union of people that mutually agree to associate, and to abide by a body of law, a constitution, devised “for the greatest good of the greatest number”?

Many, many nations have these things. None of them define what America is, as distinct from any place else.

Before Abraham Lincoln, when people spoke of the United States, they said, “the United States are....” After Abraham Lincoln’s successful Presidential defense of the Union, and victory against slavery, a new idea of America came into being. “The United States is....” Lincoln’s idea of America, Frederick Douglass’ idea of America, was a new America, “a more perfect Union.”

But if America “is an idea, not a place”, what is the idea?

According to the Declaration of Independence, America is not a form of self-government—it is a method of self-government. Whenever the form (as for example seen in the racially discriminatory Supreme Court legislation of 1896-1954) becomes destructive of the ends for which the form was ostensibly created, it must be consciously rejected and abolished. That is how self-government, and musical composition improve. That idea of American self-government is identical, in principle, to Classical music’s motivic thorough-compositional method of motivfuhrung. Motivfuhring is the idea of an underlying unity of action and change, that governs the motion of musical movements in such works as a symphony, sonata, or string quartet. Though motivic thorough-composition was first pioneered by Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Joseph Haydn, with his invention of the string quartet, and his later 1781 revolution upon his own invention (in his op. 33 String Quartets), made the organic unity of such a movement, as a process of change, a matter for conscious deliberation, though for the time being limited within a single movement.

Haydn and Mozart loved each other as father and son (Perhaps it was also so for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, though they could never have met). Mozart, composed, over three years, Six Quartets dedicated to Haydn, and wrote that he was, like a father, entrusting his sons to a friend. Why did it take Mozart three years, when Haydn composed much more quickly?

Mozart had accepted the challenge, and succeeded in extending the motivfuhrung principle to an entire work, of three or four movements! The development of music was towards a more perfect union. That is not some academic concept. The principle of the American Revolution could not exist side-by side with oligarchical structures such as slavery. Such "dissonances' had to be integrated, freely, into the concept of the Republic, as belonging to a more perfect composition.

DVORAK

Jeanette Thurber founded the National Conservatory of Music in 1891 for specific reasons. She was a graduate of the Paris Conservatory, and wished to elevate American standards overall. More importantly, she recognized that the victories gained by African- Americans in the wake of the Civil War were being reversed by sharecropping, and the Jim Crow reaction.

For Jeanette Thurber (one of the unsung genii of the USA), this resurrection of racism could be most efficiently be fought, by educating young African-Americans in classical music. What better way to cut through the Gordian Knot?

She hired the best in every department, but sought out Antonin Dvorak to head composition. Dvorak had mastered thorough composition. He was inspired by the Third Symphony of Brahms to compose his own Seventh Symphony so that it would not contain "One superfluous note”. Dvorak was also a Czech [Bohemian] patriot. Thurber counted that he would be sympathetic to the cause of American descendants of slaves, and she was right! In an interview with the new York Herald, Dvorak said:

"In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."

He, and a few collaborators, agreed that "negro spirituals" provided all of the necessary ingredients for a national school of classical music. The freakout was intense. Dvorak was denounced, and it was even suggested that the words were put into his mouth by the journalist James Creelman. Dvorak, however, defended his statements.

We suggested a while ago that inspiration for truly national music might be derived from the Negro melodies and Indian chants. We take this view partly by the fact that the so-called plantation songs are indeed the most striking and appealing melodies that have yet been found on this side of the water, but largely by the observation that this seems to be recognized, though often unconsciously, by most Americans. All races have their distinctively national songs, which they at once recognize as their own, even if they have never heard them before. It is a proper question to ask, what songs, then, belong to the American and appeal more strongly to him than any others? What melody could stop him on the street if he were in a strange land and make the home feeling well up within him, no matter how hardened he might be or how wretchedly the tune were played? Their number, to be sure, seems to be limited. The most potent as well as the most beautiful among them, according to our estimation, are certain of the so-called plantation melodies and slave songs, all of which are distinguished by unusual and subtle harmonies, the like of which I have found in no other songs but those of old Scotland and Ireland"

Here we see the Classical Principle at its highest. The Classical Principle is never about serving the status quo. It is always about elevating the common and oppressed peoples, to a higher level. Harry Burleigh taught the "Negro Spirutuals" to Dvorak, which he loved. Dvorak asked Burleigh, whose family had been active in the underground railroad, to relate not just the music, but of the struggles of his people. Burleigh made some beautiful settings of the spirituals, far beyond what might have been expected. Here is his arrangement of "My Lord, What a Morning."

https://youtu.be/JNOSzk190iw

Dvorak included American spirituals into his New World Symphony in subtle ways. He was often subjected to the racist charge that he was a dumb Czech peasant "stupified by the din and hustle of a busy life" in the New World, and only composed works based on traditional Cezh melodies while in America. That is also wrong. Rather than quote spirituals, he found common characteristics in rhythm and harmony between African-American, and native "indian" music, and composed new tunes that sounded American because of those characteristics. These were presented in his New World Symphony on Dec 16th, 1892,which is both the birthday of Beethoven, and the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Once in a while though, Dvorak references one of the spirituals. His quote from "Swing Low Sweet Chariot in the New World Symphony is most notable. But' listen to Harry Burleigh's arrangement of " Go Tell it n the Mountain":

https://youtu.be/QkZLtHLnYHs

and compare it to the horn solo in Dvorak's Cello Concerto.

https://youtu.be/1LirZDmdpNo

But perhaps the most strikingly American thing the composer did was this. He had attended a concert of patriotic American songs, and remarked that it was a shame to have "My Country 'tis of Thee" set to a British tune (Go Save the King). He started work to compose new music for the poem. It was never finished, but the song was used in the Larghetto of the String Quintet, Op 97, which he composed in Spillville Iowa. It begins at measure 17. Try signing the poetry to it.

My country 'tis of thee

Sweet land of liberty

Of thee I sing, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died

Land of the pilgrims pride

From every mountain side

Let freedom ring. Let freedom ring.

“America is An Idea, Not A Place”—Dvorak and Burleigh in America

Today, July 4th, is America’s national holiday—America’s birthday. What is America? Is it a set of states? A territory bounded with borders? A union of people that mutually agree to associate, and to abide by a body of law, a constitution, devised “for the greatest good of the greatest number”? Many, many nations have these things. None of them; therefore, define what America is, as distinct from any place else.

Before Abraham Lincoln, when people spoke of the United States, they said, “the United States are....” After Abraham Lincoln’s successful Presidential defense of the Union, and victory against slavery, a new idea of America came into being. “The United States is....” Lincoln’s idea of America, Frederick Douglass’ idea of America, was a new America, “a more perfect Union.”

But if America “is an idea, not a place”, what is the idea?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”

—The Declaration of Independence

Why did Lincoln recite passages from the plays of Shakespeare to his war- cabinet? Why is his Gettysburg Address perhaps America’s greatest poem? Lincoln, “dirt poor”, almost entirely self-taught, was profoundly committed to capturing the music of truth and communicating that in the most direct way possible. Lincoln sought to restore the “classical culture” of America’s Declaration of Independence through his defense of the Unit-Idea of the United States. It was, for him, a musical concept. “The mystic chords of memory...will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

According to the Declaration of Independence, America is not a FORM of self-government—it is a METHOD of self-government. Whenever the form (as for example seen in the racially discriminatory Supreme Court legislation of 1896-1954) becomes destructive of the ends for which the form was ostensibly created, it must be consciously rejected and abolished. That is how self-government improves, and musical composition, improves. That idea of American self-government is identical, in principle, to Classical music’s motivic thorough-compositional method (motivfuhrung). Motivfuhring is the idea that an underlying unity of action governs the motion of the multiple movements of a symphony, sonata, or string quartet. Motivic thorough-composition was first pioneered by Johann Sebastian Bach in pieces such as his cello suites, and much further developed in pieces such as in his “A Musical Offering”. Then, with Franz Joseph Haydn’s invention of the string quartet, it was made completely conscious as a compositional principle in his Op. 33 String Quartets (6 in total), composed in the year 1781.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who arrived in Vienna that same year, was first introduced to the compositions of Bach through the Vienna salon of Baron von Swieten. Mozart responded, both to Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” and “Musical Offering”, and to Haydn’s motivfuhrung method of writing string quartets, in which all the several movements are bound together by a unit-idea of the whole, by composing his “Six Quartets” Dedicated to Haydn over the period from December 1782 to January 1785. Haydn and Mozart, both violinists, played Mozart’s quartets together. Mozart’s discovery resituated all of Bach’s immense contribution to music within a new compositional method, which would in turn be advanced to its highest level of perfection in Beethoven’s Symphonies, particularly the Fifth and Ninth.

DVORAK and BURLEIGH

The triumphs of our land in music ... lie in the future ... If we were all made of unmixed English blood, we might have long to wait for them ... Let us hope that our guest tonight [Dvořák] ... may consent to transplantation and may help add the new world of music to the continent which Columbus found.

—Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carnegie Hall, Columbus Day, 1892 

Antonin Dvorak’s American journey involved nothing less than the application of the idea of motivic thorough-composition to improving the method of American self-government through the arts, by means of what Friedrich Schiller called “aesthetic education.” National schools of composition, such as Mozart’s work in the German language with his “Die Zauberflote” (The Magic Flute) and “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail” (Abduction From the Seraglio), Beethoven’s “Fidelio”, and the work of both Brahms and Dvorak with German folk songs and Hungarian and Czech themes, were a means to the improvement of the capacity of whole national populations to think, freeing them from the cognitive slavery of everyday life. This same mission was now to be initiated in the United States.

Dvorak, coming to America for the first time in 1892 to head the National Conservatory of Music, recognized that in the prosody of the Spirituals, the potential for the development of the richness of their “musical line”, by means of polyphony—not simply their literal themes—would supply the basis for the advancement of music in America. Supplied with the Classical breakthrough in composition which Dvorak called the “durch führung”, congruent with the “motivführung” principle of Haydn through Brahms, the Spirituals would become the seed- crystal for the new school of composition. Dvorak’s student, copyist and musical collaborator, the African-American singer and composer Harry T. Burleigh, said:

“Dvorak used to get tired during the day and I would sing to him after supper. I have been hungry in my time, I had known how hard it was to overcome discrimination and I knew what a great man Dvorak was in music... I gave him what I knew of Negro songs – no one called them Spirituals—and he wrote some of my tunes (my people’s music) into the New World Symphony which was performed for the first time by the New York Philharmonic on December 15, 1893”—129 years ago. “I never forgot that first public performance. I suppose it was the first time in the history of music that a Negro’s song had been a major theme in a great symphonic work.”

Burleigh’s grandfather, Hamilton Waters, was released from slavery in 1832. He had been punished with 70 lashes for learning how to read. Waters became a conductor on the Underground Railroad, as also had Burleigh’s mother Elizabeth, a college graduate and Classical scholar who spoke French and taught Greek and Latin (and also aided runaway slaves). His grandfather and mother taught Burleigh the Spirituals. Burleigh’s singing-sessions with Dvorak were an oral history of America. The successful fight for freedom that had been concluded less than 30 years before Dvorak’s arrival was embedded in the very tones and timbre of Harry T. Burleigh’s voice.

Dvorak’s visit to America, and his productivity here, embodies what is great and noble in the character of this country.

Today, on America’s birthday, we recognize the momentous importance of that day, 129 years ago, when Dvorak sat in a box in Carnegie Hall and heard his unique voice sing an American song, points to the secret as to how our nation, forgetful of its own spirit, might regain its capacity for self-government by simply choosing to sing those Spirituals, “as great as any theme from Beethoven”, with Dvorak once again.

https://youtu.be/KFosvC56_b4

Was There Such a Thing as a Romantic Period Part 3 -- Following Beethoven

Classical Principle Weekly

June 28, 2022

In our last essay, we featured the monumental second movement—the funeral march—from Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, “Eroica”. Over 17 minutes long, it poses the question of loss—of a great leader, or of a great artists or contributor to mankind, and the efforts to fill the vacuum.

The first and only concert ever given, that consisted solely of Schubert's music, was organized by Schubert himself on March 26, 1828, on exactly the one-year anniversary of Beethoven's death. For any composer attempting to pick up Beethoven's mantle, the task would be as daunting as any politician attempting the mantle of Abraham Lincoln. For those who follow the Classical Principle, art is not mere entertainment, but responsibility for the future of civilization, which depends on great art as much as it does on statecraft and science. In presenting that concert on March 26, Schubert put forth his willingness to accept the mission.

Schubert admired Beethoven. He studied many of Beethoven’s more difficult works such as the Diabelli Variations, as soon as it’s available. The opening of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy (Fantasie in C major, Op. 15, D760, composed 1822), reminds us very much of the first movement of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53). The final movement is one of Schubert's few experiments with fugal writing, and employs the falling diminished 7th interval, characteristic of Bach's Musical Offering (BWV1079). In the Second Movement, Schubert is in a dialogue with his own inner creative processes (Listen to the audio.) All of those concerned with continuing the classical tradition, saw the continuity of not just Beethoven, but Bach through Beethoven, as the red thread to be followed. Those who complain that Bach was a composer from the Baroque period, miss his profound influence on subsequent generations. After Mozart was led to rediscover Bach at the salon of Baron van Swieten in 1782, he, and later Beethoven, supposedly both of the Classical Period, incorporated fugal and double-fugal writing in their works to an astounding degree.

FOLLOWING BEETHOVEN

In 1825, the young poet, Ludwig Rellstab, gave a number of his poems to Beethoven's assistant, Anton Schindler, in the hopes that Beethoven might set them. When Beethoven became too ill to even contemplate it, Schindler bequeathed the poems to Schubert, whom he saw as Beethoven's successor.

One of those poems, discussed last week, was "Auf dem Strom", for voice, piano, and horn (D943, composed 1828). That setting had its world premier at the March 26, 1828 concert. As noted last week, Schubert quoted the Funeral March from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony in the song.

Seven of the Rellstab poems, six by Heinrich Heine, and one by Seidl became the basis of Schubert’s Schwanengesang (Swan Song), D957, assembled by composer and publisher Tobias Haslinger with the assistance of Schubert's brother. Schubert's setting of Heine's "Der Atlas" invokes the opening of Beetoven''s sonata, Op 111. The music identifies with the image of Atlas, having to hold up the entire world.

Here is a complete recording of "Der Atlas”: https://youtu.be/27h6uzCFJ8E

The concert was meant to launch Schubert's career. He was known as a "song composer", and insisted on including his instrumental music, the most significant of which was his masterpiece, the Piano Trio in Eb, Op. 100, D 969.

FOLK MUSIC

One of the Hallmarks of the classical principle is the effort to uplift folk art. While the romantics tended to praise ancient myths, such as the Nibelungen, as superior to modern civilization, classicists not only recognized the great beauty in folk art, but also saw the possibility to transform that beauty into something sublime. Classical music is sometimes slandered as elitist. Nothing could be further from the truth. Classical music is always seeking the beauty that people know, or think they know, and take for granted; and show them riches within it that they never even dreamt of. Beauty can change, for the better. Just as such reflection can inspire us not to take songs we know as incapable of change, it also motivates us not to take ourselves or our neighbours as fixed and incapable of change..

Schubert heard this Swedish folk song at a Music Evening:

Se solen sjunker

Se solen sjunker ner bak höga bergens topp.

För nattens mörka skuggor Du flyr o sköna hopp.

Farväl. Farväl.

Ack, vännen glömde bort sin trogna väna brud.

La la la la la la la &c

See the sun is setting fast behind each mountain peak.

Ere night comes with dark shadows, you flee, sweet hope now bleak.

Farewell. Farewell.

Ah, the friend’s thoughts are no more of his fair and faithful bride.

La la la la la la la &

Se solen sjunker: https://youtu.be/d1CosPXX7m4

Schubert used this strangely depressing song as the basis for the Andante movement of his Op. 100 Piano Trio, which was also premiered at the March 26th concert. However, he used the motive of a leap up followed by a second down, and changed it into varying downward intervals, as part of a key change, to turn the music in a far more optimistic direction. How did he do that? It lies in the power of human creativity to reveal such hidden potential through discovery, and development.

https://youtu.be/zCDdQoQaDZc

The accompanying audio discussion:

https://drive.google.com/.../1lt.../view...

Was There Such a Thing as a Romantic Period Part 2– "AFTER BEETHOVEN"

The Classical Principle Weekly

June 21, 2022

Humanity depends upon great leaders, who develop their creative powers of mind, and apply them for the benefit of humanity. It also depends on its citizens to live up to such standards. History shows that when such a leader is taken from us, it leaves a vacuum. Who could fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt. Who could pick up the moral leadership of a Martin Luther King, a Joan of Arc (yes, she was a real person), a Patrice Lumumba or a Kwami Nkrumah?

Revisionist historians tend to downplay the role of great leaders— insisting that the ball is always picked up by somebody, and somehow we continue to muddle through. The truth is otherwise. Good people will try to fill the vacuum, but reactionary tendencies in society also tend to seize the opportunity to reverse progress made by great leaders during their lifetime.

The same is true in science and art. We have written over 200 essay about Beethoven—the product of over a century of sweeping progress in political freedom, artistic breakthroughs, human rights—and his compositions (see https://www.ffrcc.org/daily-dose-of-beethoven). Yet, he is still often described as the first “Romantic” composer. Although Beethoven carried music to dizzying new heights; Upon his death in 1827, the question was: "What do we do now?" Some sought to continue Beethoven's progress in the classical tradition further forward. Others, while praising Beethoven, sought to bury him, so that they would not have to be tested in the same arena. All saw the task as daunting.

In the next few episodes, we will examine the responses to the challenge, and hopefully progress beyond the amorphous nation of a "Romantic Period", and gain a finer insight into the differences between the Romantic movement, and those who wished to continue the classical tradition of Bach through Beethoven.

Before dealing with subsequent composers, we present the problem as bequeathed by Beethoven. In 1803, while composing his “Third Symphony—the Eroica”, Beethoven sketches out a dedication in the first moment to Napoleon, who had seem to be the valiant ambassador of the everyman, standing for freedom, equal rights and balance of power. However, when Napoleon declared himself Emperor, Beethoven scratched out the dedication, and dedicated it "to the memory of a great man." He did not mean Napoleon in his former days. He looked to the future, and leaders who have delivered humanity.

The second movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony is a funeral. Who writes a funeral movement over 17 minutes long?—Longer than entire Haydn Symphonies! And why? We have accompanied the music with videos of funeral processions for great leaders- not to be morbid, but to identify what we have lost. Like any great musical funeral march, or elegy, it carries a happy moment of remembrance.

This movement presents a challenge that is musical, moral, and historical. How, if we follow Beethoven, is not just a musical challenge. It is a challenge in life!

https://drive.google.com/.../1bRws5RVnStdYMW63Oiy.../view...

The Man Who Took up the Challenge

The only concert Schubert ever organized of his own music was on March 26th, 1828, just seven months before his own death. Some accounts of the concert say that he staged it because he needed more publicity to get his works published. That may be true, but they are missing one thing: March 26, 1828 was the first anniversary of Beethoven's death.

Schubert did not know that he would only live for another half year. He felt it necessary to pick up the mantle of Beethoven, as terrifying a prospect as that might be. The concertwas his way of announcing that commitment. It was a shining moment for Schubert, but also an intimidating one.

The poet Rellstab had given several of his poems to Beethoven in the hopes that he would set them to music. When Beethoven became too ill to consider it, his secretary, Schindler, gave the poems to Schubert, who set several of them to music.

Schubert's concert was the world premier of his setting of one of the Rellstab poems, “Auf dem Strom, D943”, for voice, piano, and horn. In it, Schubert employs a direct quote from the funeral (2nd) movement of Beethoven's "Eroica (Heroic) Symphony", on the words:

Oh, in that dark desert

Far from any bright coast

Where no island to look

Oh, how trembling horror seizes me!

Beethoven had scratched out his original dedication to Napoleon, and rededicated it to "the memory of a great man." For Schubert, Beethoven clearly was that great man.

This short audio compares the passages: It comes from the Daily Dose of Beethoven, July 20th 2020.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bRws5RVnStdYMW63OiyL_UQ1xpkb1_P_/view?usp=sharing

Classical Principle Weekly: Was there such a thing as a Romantic Period?

In this essay, we will try to present the differences between romanticism and classicism in as impartial a manner as possible, so that the reader may draw his or her own conclusions. Please note, that all citations were fact checked.

Today, we label all artistic endeavors of the 19th century as part of the "Romantic Period." There was a Romantic movement, but not everyone ascribed to it. The Romantic movement began in Germany with German poetry—in the late 18th century, by poets such as Ludwig Tieck and Friedrich Schlegel. The Romantic poets were active at the same time as Weimar Classicism—led by Friedrich Schiller—was active. In contrasting these two schools, the question posed begin to take on clarity.

There are several ideas that served as rallying cries for the Romantics:

1. The rejection of the Republican spirit of the era and its emphasis on human equality, in favor of a retreat to the past, of imaginary, medieval myths of chivalry, gallantry, and knights in shining armor-a time when "everybody knew their place". This included emphasis on the Tale of Roland (an eighth century French knight), the Legend of King Arthur and his Round Table, the search for "The Holy Grail", and the Crusades. In contrast, Schiller concentrated on actual historical fights for actual freedom in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Joan of Arc's France.

2, The rejection of reason and industrial society as promoted by the classical idea. The emphasis was the fear of science through horror stories, mainly in gothic novels. The most famous of these is Mary Shelley's 1818 novel “Frankenstein”, subtitled "The Modern Prometheus". For centuries, Prometheus—the God who gave the gift of fire to man, and was punished for it by Zeus—and considered a hero to mankind. Now, the Modern Prometheus—Frankenstein—in his experiments with electricity, is a villain creating monsters. Was the name Frankenstein a take on Benjamin Franklin? (Fear of nuclear power is just the modern version of it.)

3. The perversion of the sense of political freedom sweeping the world, by promoting the complete freedom of the individual, but as mere erotic license, free from any sense of responsibility to humanity ( i.e. “Lucinda” by Friedrich Schlegel.)

4. The rejection of the rigor employed by classical artists, necessary in science and art for the advancement of humanity, in favor of the artist as a free spirit, doing whatever he or she chooses—“Art for art's sake”. Romantics hold that Art is not to be subjected to criticism or standards. Art judges itself.

The brothers, Wilhelm and Friedrich Schegel, expanded the movement with a periodical called “Athenium”. In 1798 they published an article called "History of the Poesy of the Greeks and Romans." Most people might think that the term “romantic” derives from highly idealized love stories, but it actually comes from Roman, and what the Roman Empire stood for.

At first, the ideas were somewhat confused. Some classical poets thought of themselves as romantics. Some Romantics adhered to classical rigor. Gradually, they sorted themselves out. Let us listen to two.

Percy Shelley (who happens to be the husband of afore mentioned Mary Shelley), composed a beautiful hymn to reason—“To a Skylark”. It's flowery language may seem romantic on the surface, but listen to what he is saying.

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

He hails the spirit of the Skylark, but tells you in the second line, in no uncertain terms, that he is not talking about a bird. The Skylark is a metaphor for the human creative spirit! The last line in each stanza is a long line, and it takes great thought, on the part of the reciter, to get it right.

The second stanza, while a seeming description of the Skylark's flight, invokes the four elements, known to the Greeks as air, earth, fire and water.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

As in a longer piece of music, the tempo and tone change: This is a slow tempo

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aëreal hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view.

This verse begins a process of accelerando

Teach us, Sprite or Bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus Hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Match'd with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

The poem ends with:

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now

Shelley is always citing something deeper. In the poem as a whole, he invokes the true nature of creativity, as did Edgar Allem Poe later. We couldn’t quote the entire poem here for length, but you can find it here: https://poets.org/poem/skylark

We now compare this to a poet who also seems torn between the romantic and the classical—William Wordsworth. The following poem is beautiful. After reading it, tell us where he stands, compared to Shelley.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

The Romantic movement in music began later, as composers pondered what to do after Beethoven. Stay tuned.

https://poets.org/poem/skylark

Classical Principle Weekly: The Role of Ukraine in Music

Given the the recent events around Russia and Ukraine , we hope that this following essay will be of interest to our readers.

PETER and LEIBNIZ’S VISION FOR RUSSIA: THE ROLE OF UKRAINE in MUSIC

Czar Peter the Great (1672-1725, born 13 years before J.S. Bach), became Emperor Peter in 1721. Peter realized that if Russia were to survive, it would have to modernize. He greatly expanded Russia’s territory, and led a cultural revolution that included the modernization of Russia’s scientific, social, political systems.

In 1697 he spent 18 months travelling through Europe, examining scientific academies, studying ship building, and meeting prominent scientists and artists. Most importantly he engaged the great statesman and scientist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz as an advisor. Both men thought that Russia should not just imitate the west, but take the best from it and create something new. Ironically, Leibniz called Russia a “tabula rasa” (blank slate.)

The new capital, Saint Petersburg (established in 1703), was intended to demonstrate that. Italian architects like Rastrelli, and Trezzini, did not build in the Italian style, or the Russian, but combined both (see photos at end.) In music, the Court Chapel Choir was developed into what many reported to be the best chorus in the world.

UKRAINE AND VOCAL POLYPHONY

Ukraine had greater and earlier access to the West than Russia, and Ukrainian scholars led an effort to uplift musical standards from the early 1500's on. Composers such as Sebastian z Felsztyna, Marcin Leopolita (of Lvov), and in the 17th century Mykola Dyletsky (of Kiev) wrote treatises on music, introducing precise notation and polyphony. (They were from Ukraine, but are sometimes known as Polish composers, since Ukraine was part of Poland at the time.) These treatises caused an uproar. Such westernization was seen by "old-believers" as heresy, and denounced as "Musikiia." Russian chants were often improvised solos based on imprecise notes called “Neumes”.

The Orthodox Church would not allow instruments in its services, so the composers wrote polyphonic “a capella” music (meaning, as “done in the Chapel”), for unaccompanied voices. The Ukrainians decided that a limitation would be turned into a strength. Here is an amazing work by Mykola Dyletsky (also spelled as Nikolay Diletsky) from the mid-1600's.

https://youtu.be/lYrGr6Nzz6Y

For centuries, Russia, led by Ukraine and Italy, produced beautiful choral music.

THE COURT CHAPEL CHOIR

The approach of the Italian architects was replicated in music. For seventy years, great Italian opera composers were brought in to develop the Court Chapel Choir in St. Petersburg to the highest level. This included Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801), Francesco Onofrio Manfredini, Martin y Soler, Raupach, Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785), Giuseppe Sarti (1729-1802), and Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816, Beethoven wrote a series of piano variations—“Nel cor piu non mi sento“, WoO70– on Paisiello’s Opera “ La Molinara”). The singers were mostly Ukrainian.

In 1736, a singing school was established in the Ukrainian city of Hlukhiv. The future choir members trained there. The three great Russian composers of the late 18th century, Maxim Berezovsky (1745-77), Artemy Vedel (1767-1808), and Dmitro Bortniansky (1751-1825) were all Ukrainians, educated at that facility. In 1765, Galuppi became court composer and conductor during the reign of Catherine the Great, who defended the young American Republic with the League of Armed Neutrality. Galuppi said that he had never heard such a fine chorus in all of Italy.

Portrait of Dmytro Bortniansky (1810s)

Galuppi’s Italian works sound typically Italian. Here, an aria from his “Antigone”:

https://youtu.be/DWOuGH29zOg

But his Russian works are entirely different:

https://youtu.be/xLcGfEScJWg

We can show you that it is the same with Sarti. Here’s a Italian composition sung by the famous Renata Tebaldi:

https://youtu.be/KyACISjMt-c

Here’s Sarti Russian chorus "And Now the Powers of Heaven":

https://youtu.be/4VI6chNJe50

Like the architects, the Italian composers were creating something new. The chorus was trained in bel canto singing methods, and "choral orchestration" was developed including the use of "octavists" (deep basses).

Bortniansky studied in Hlukhiv, and joined the St. Petersburg chorus as a boy. Galuppi, recognizing his talent, and brought him to Italy to study for 11 years. He studied with Padre Martini around the same time as the young Mozart. He composed successful Italian operas. (From Creonte):

https://youtu.be/r1qQmLM7Aeo

and powerful Russian music. His Cherubic Hymn number 7 encourages us to act as angels while on earth:

https://youtu.be/GDCwdreKpXI

He became the first non-import to head the St. Petersburg Court Choir, which had become known as the best choir in the world with its Italian bel-canto training (it was unusual for a Ukrainian to be given such a position). With the St Petersburg Philharmonic, he played works by Haydn and Mozart, (just when Alexander Hamilton's writings were being enthusiastically circulated in St. Petersburg), and invited the public to free rehearsals. He guaranteed parents, who committed their children to the choir, that their kids would have good jobs after their voices changed. When Beethoven had his Missa Solemnis premiered in St Petersburg (April 7, 1824), he specified Bortniansky and his chorus.

How many cultures are involved here? Bortniansky was uplifting Russian culture, through Italian bel-canto singing, and through the Ukrainian tradition of beautiful a capella choral music, with the help of Beethoven and Leibniz.

The Empress Catherine gave Bortniansky control over all Russian music, in order that it all reach the highest standards.

The Classical Principle Weekly: Introduction

Introduction

We are the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture. We’re often asked, what do you mean by that? What is your definition of Classical culture, and why do you need to revive it? We hope to answer your questions and explore the vast landscape of Classical Culture through this new weekly publication.

Let us attempt to answer the first question. Classical culture is not what is encompassed in the shallow use of the term "classic." We hear of "classic Rock", " classic Coke", " classic typewriters", and so on. But when it comes to classic toilets and classic outhouses, we must smell a fault, and realize that this use of the term is nothing but an odiferous wave of nostalgia, for mostly, objects: objects from the childhood of still-living generations.

What then, is our emotional connection to something created generations before the oldest living person? It cannot be nostalgia, but something more durable.

A child sees a great and old painting, and the artist seems to step off the canvas and invite her or him in. Does surviving the test of time make a work classical? Not necessarily. Conversely, there are some contemporary works that are classical. We need a better enumerated definition.

Two key terms that might helps us grasp the idea of “classical principle” are “generation” and “degeneration”. To “generate” means to give birth to, whether to a new human being or a new idea. It is in the nature of humanity to generate new people, and also to generate new and benevolent ideas. Subsequent generations deserve the benefit of our discoveries, and the past discoveries that shaped us, so that they may build upon them, and generate even better new ideas.

“Degeneration” consists of moving away from that creative generative principle. It thrives on a lack of The Good. Degeneracy can be seen in civilizations that coasted on past discoveries, but could not generate anything new, and eventually decayed. When the Spanish came to the New World, they, who had also entered into a downhill slide, encountered civilizations that had made great discoveries, but degenerated into Bestiality. (Spain, in 1492, the same year that they sent Columbus to the New World, also began the expulsion of the Jews and the unnecessary conquest of the Alhambra. The Inquisition was already underway. Later they expelled the Moriscos. In the New World, the Aztecs had a mighty city, but sacrificed people to the gods by cutting out their hearts, and rolling them down the temple steps. The Mayans had a calendar that only lost one day a year, but played a type of basketball where the winner was sacrificed. Pizarro was able to beat the Inca with only a small force, because neighbouring tribes that had been enslaved by the Inca joined him. Most historians agree that these civilizations had reached their high points centuries before. ).

It is inescapable that the classical principle, in both art and science, generates both material and spiritual advancement for humanity. How do we know if science is true? Even more, how do we know if art is true? We do not measure it against anyone's personal and narrow artificial constructs. But, there lies the rub. Freeing truth from such an artificial Procrustean bed, does not mean that the truth is whatever we think it is, or want it to be. It is bigger than us, and we must never cease to seek it.

The measure of truth in art and science has to lie in their ability to improve humanity's lot. How else could it be? If this generation of ideas leads to, no matter how indirectly, higher levels of education, higher levels of productivity, the ability to sustain a larger population in the same area, but at a higher standard of living, and to a more gentle and understanding humanity; then the ideas are a success, and their truth is proven in that success, and perhaps only there!

Here lies another rub. Humanity, for millennia, has had faith that mankind is the high point of God's Creation. Leave aside religion. They thought, rightly, that man, through reason, was above the beasts. Recent generations have become convinced that man is bad, and is the most dangerous animal on earth. This is the largest and most successful mass brainwashing that has ever taken place.

Face the paradox! If you love great classical art, how do you reconcile its promotion of the beauty of mind, and the nobility of humanity, with the extreme cultural pessimism that sees man as a disease upon the universe?

If classical art and science are to advance humanity, then they must promote, and survive on, creativity. Creativity does not mean abandoning standards and calling it creativity. Creativity means employing reason, and make new discoveries that incorporate past discoveries at a higher level.

The Classical Principle recognizes the divine laws of the universe, including musical laws. It does not seek to impose arbitrary systems. On the other hand, the universal musical system, though determined outside of man, and long before him, does allow for growth, and progress, which only man can do. God never composed a symphony, He assigned that to humanity.

The classical principle seeks to elevate both entire societies, and individuals, above that which would drag us down, to our creative role in lifting humanity.

Coming back to the idea of being moved to the depths of our souls by something that came centuries before we were born, something that was true then, that is true now—The words for Bach's Cantata 54 came from the Epistle of James, which was then set by a poet, Georg Christian Lehms (1684, Legnica, Poland ), who went by the name of Pallidor. Pallidor wrote poetry, opera libretti, and novels. (Bach's son called his father's home a pigeon coop. People were constantly flying in and out of it, including poets. It was a cauldron of creativity).

Pallidor's text opens with "Widerstehe doch der Sunde '' (stand firm against sin.) The very term “sin” is something we laugh at today. If you think of sin as turning away from what is natural, love, then it becomes real. How many people do you know, have needed help to turn away from tendencies that are destructive to both themselves and others, and towards love. Bach does not just say the words. He creates it in the music—How the dissonances evoke uncertainty, yet how a stalwart quality is maintained in the repeated notes. Yet, it is not literal.

When you read the text of that cantata, rise above the religious context, and contemplate how it can move us, even help us, after more than 300 years. This series will address the nature of that classical quality.

Here’s a scrolling version of the Bach Cantata 54, “Widerstehe doch der Sünde”, BWV 54: https://youtu.be/Zgf1amBRg2Y

Here is another version, sung by the late great Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester., who was the polar opposite of a prima donna: https://youtu.be/vsxjgWgb7KA

TEXT:

Stand firm against sin,

otherwise its poison seizes hold of you.

Do not let Satan blind you

for to desecrate the honour of God

meets with a curse, which leads to death.

The nature of loathsome sins

is indeed from outside very beautiful;

but you must

afterwards with sorrow and frustration

experience much hardship.

From outside it is gold

but if you want to look more closely

it is shown to be only an empty shadow

and whitewashed tomb.

It is like the apples of Sodom

and those who join with it

do not reach God's kingdom.

It is like a sharp sword

that goes through our body and soul.

Who commits sins is of the devil,

for it is he who has produced them.

but if against its despicable mobs

with true devotion you stand firm,

sin has at once fled away.