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2 CD -
82876 61244 2 - (p) 2005
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| 2 LP -
88985341981 - (c) 2016 |
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| Giuseppe
Verdi (1813-1901) |
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| Messa da Requiem
(1869/1873-5) |
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87' 43" |
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| per l'anniversario della
morte di Manzoni 22 maggio 1874 - New
critical edition by David Rosen |
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| I. Requiem & Kyrie |
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8' 36" |
CD1-1 |
| II.
Sequenz: Dies irae |
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2' 56" |
CD1-2 |
| III. Sequenz: |
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38' 41" |
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| - Dies irae |
2' 34" |
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CD1-3 |
| - Tuba mirum |
3' 33" |
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CD1-4 |
- Liber scriptus
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5' 20" |
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CD1-5 |
| - Quid sum miser |
3' 51" |
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CD1-6 |
| - Rex tremendae |
3' 38" |
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CD1-7 |
- Recordare
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4' 17" |
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CD1-8 |
| - Ingemisco |
3' 43" |
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CD1-9 |
| - Confutatis |
5' 57" |
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CD1-10 |
| - Lacrymosa |
4' 46" |
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CD1-11 |
| III.
Offertorio: |
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10' 50" |
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| - Offertorio |
4' 52" |
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CD2-1 |
| - Hostias |
5' 58" |
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CD2-2 |
| IV. Sanctus |
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3' 01" |
CD2-3 |
| V. Agnus Dei |
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4' 55" |
CD2-4 |
| VI. Lux aeterna |
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6' 29" |
CD2-5 |
VII. Libera me:
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15' 10" |
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- Libera me
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2' 39" |
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CD2-6 |
- Dies irae
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5' 41" |
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CD2-7 |
| - Libera me |
6' 50" |
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CD2-8 |
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| Eva Mei,
Soprano |
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| Bernarda Fink,
Mezzo-soprano |
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| Michael Schade,
Tenor |
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| Ildebrando
d'Arcangelo,
Bass |
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| Arnold Schoenberg Chor |
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| Wiener Philharmoniker |
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt
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Luogo
e data di registrazione
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| Musikverein,
Großer Saal, Vienna (Austria) - 6-11
dicembre 2004 |
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Registrazione
live / studio
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| live |
Producer
/ Engineer
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Friedemann
Engelbrecht / Michael Brammann / Teldex
Studio Berlin
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Prima Edizione CD
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| RCA
"Red Seal" - 82876 61244 2 - (2 cd) -
47' 15" + 40' 28" - (p) 2005 - DDD |
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Prima
Edizione LP
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| RCA
"Red Seal" - 88985341981 - (2 lp) - 47'
15" + 40' 28" - (c) 2016 - DIG |
|
| Notes |
To
this day, critics are fond of dismissing
the Verdi Requiem as 'operatic'. The
church musician Hans Christoph
Becker-Foss quite rightly deemed this to
be “a dreadful reproach. It insinuates
that the work is superficial, full of
cheap showmanship and inappropriate in
its use of musical resources and its
interpretation of the text: to imply
this about a liturgical score dealing
with life and death is impertinent, if
not heresy". How did 'experts' come to
dismiss the Requiem thus? Becker-Foss
believes they were trying "to distance
themselves from the distressing effect
that a performance of the work has on
the listener". This may well have
applied to the symphonies of Anton
Bruckner, too, which must have seemed
nothing short of overwhelming to
audiences in 1880 Vienna, but were
likewise rejected by the critics as
"more dramatic than symphonic" in
character. The misunderstanding of
Verdi’s work was also a product of the
conservative aesthetics of his time -
after all, Verdi himself conducted the
first performances of the Requiem in its
final form in the strongholds of
Europe’s music criticism: London, 15th
May 1875; Paris, 9th June 1875; Vienna,
11th June 1875; Cologne, 21st May 1877,
with follow-up concerts in each case.
A particularly impudent article by Hans
von Bülow was published in the Allgemeine
Zeitung of 21st May 1874 with the
title “Opera in ecclesiastical
vestments": "Tomorrow, St. Mark's Church
in Milan, which has been turned into a
splendid theatre auditorium for the
occasion, will witness a large-scale
performance of Verdi’s Requiem, (...)
with which the ubiquitous corrupter of
Italian artistic taste presumably hopes
to sweep away the remains of Rossini's
immortality that his own ambition fnds
so loathsome." Von Bülow’s broadside was
passed around; after the first London
performance, George Bernard Shaw mocked
the Requiem as "Verdi's biggest opera",
destined to make him "as immortal as the
Messiah made Handel".
Surprisingly, perhaps, none other than
the conservative Viennese critic Eduard
Hanslick was more discriminating in his
judgment: "To find the genuine,
unsecularized purity of Catholic church
music, we need to go back as far as
Palestrina (...), or rather right back
to naked Gregorian chant. The main thing
is that the composer remains true to
himself and shows respect for his chosen
task. And one has to allow Verdi this
display of honesty: there is not one
movement in his Requiem that is
thoughtlessly done, dishonest or
frivolous. What may seem too sensual or
passionate in Verdi’s Requiem simply
retiects the emotional range of the
composer’s own people, and an Italian is
surely entitled to ask whether he may
not be permitted to talk to God in
Italian!" So we are actually looking at
an example of that ‘ltalianness’ that
German-speaking critics, at least, tend
to see as exclusively operatic nowadays,
since opera alone receives their
attention as a rule. Modern instrumental
music from Italy scarcely appears on
their critical radar, and even concert
pieces by such composers as Casella,
Malipiero, Martucci or Respighi have
often been accused of being ‘operatic’
in character. On the other hand,
liturgical works by Italian masters from
Monteverdi, Vivaldi and Rossini up to
Puccini have never denied their national
provenance, and the Verdi Requiem is at
most particularly Italian in character,
owing at least in part to the highly
personal story of its composition.
After Gioachino Rossini, whose music
Verdi held in great regard, had died in
Paris on 13th November 1868, Verdi
suggested that leading Italian composers
should join forces and write a Requiem
in his honour, to be performed on the
first anniversary of his death in
Bologna. This Messa per Rossini
was actually completed, with Verdi
contributing the Libera me, but
conceit, personal vanity and local
intrigues in Bologna stopped it from
being performed. (In fact the work was
long believed to have been lost until
David Rosen, co-editor of the Complete
Verdi Edition, discovered the score and
arranged for its first performance in
1988.) Verdi left his Libera me
behind in the offices of his publisher,
Ricordi, but then on 21st April 1873 he
asked for the autograph manuscript to be
returned - this was not the only time he
had the idea of using it as the
starting-point for his own setting of
the Requiem. In the end, it was another
death that prompted him to put the idea
into practice, namely the demise of the
novelist and poet Alessandro Manzoni on
22nd May 1873. Verdi was deeply upset by
Manzoni’s death: not only did Manzoni
play an important role in the
risorgimento - the Italian independence
movement -, Verdi had also met him in
person in Milan on 30th June 1868 - the
year of Rossini’s death. The deaths of
two of Italy's leading artists in the
space of a few years motivated him to
finally elaborate his idea for the
Requiem, which he finished on 15th April
1874, After he had conducted the first
performance on 22nd May of that year in
St. Mark's Church in Milan, Verdi made a
few corrections: in particular, in
January1875 he replaced the Liber
scriptus - a difficult choral
fugato - with the mezzo-soprano solo we
know today.
Just how absurd it is to attack the
Requiem as 'operatic' is already evident
from the layout of the text. The liturgy
of the Requiem as Verdi used it is not a
libretto or a dramatic story it is
simply a sequence of prayers in two
large parts, adding up to a total of
seven movements. The work opens with the
plea for eternal rest for the dead (Requiem
aeternam), peace and mercy (Kyrie).
The text of the Sequence (Dies irae)
was written by Thomas von Celano
(1220-1249) in the years when the plague
was ravaging Europe, based on the Libera
that accompanied the blessing of the
dead before they were buried. (It is an
odd coincidence that Verdi’s process of
composition also derived the Sequence
from the Libera he had
previously written.) Here, the
supplicant is overwhelmed by his fear of
the terrors ofthe Last Judgment, similar
to the description in Psalm 130 (De
profundis). We only reach a
breakthrough in the Offertorium, which
reminds us of the Lord’s promise (Quam
olim Abrahae). As counterparts to
the Sequence, the Sanctus, Agnus
Dei and Lux Aeterna
express the hope for salvation, and the
Libera me sums up the ideas of
the Requiem liturgy one last time.
There were regional differences in
actual practice, which generally
followed the guidelines laid down by the
Council of Trent in 1570. Different
settings of the Requiem text have
repeatedly left out individual sections:
in particular, Verdi omits the tractus Absolve
Domine and the
antiphon In Paradisum that used
to be sung during the funeral procession
in France. The background to this is
that in Milan in Verdi’s day the Missa
sicca without Consecration after
the Ambrosian ritual was customary, so
that the composer had to engage in a
lengthy correspondence with the
ecclesiastical authorities in order to
bring the Roman elements ofthe Requiem
into line with local practice at the
performance at the Manzoni memorial
service.
There may also be reasons behind the
accusation that the Verdi Requiem is
'operatic' that are rooted in Church
history: the accusation was first made
during the heyday of Cecilianism, the
extremely reactionary reform movement
that lashed out against anything in
church music that was believed to touch
the human soul in 'unchaste' fashion.
The Cecilianists rejected instrumental
accompaniment and even polyphony; in
fact they roundly condemned any display
of emotion in the Baroque sense. Even
the conservative Anton Bruckner found
this stance exaggerated and did not
adhere to it at all, and the same
applied to Hanslick, who openly
criticized Cecilianism in the
above-cited review. Here, Verdi's
setting of the Requiem was obviously
going to encounter resistance -
particularly as the composer was
possibly a free thinker and an agnostic,
and probably rejected all dogmas, even
though he often played the organ in
church in his youth. Verdi experienced
difficulties with the clergy at the very
first performance: women’s voices were
not allowed in church music, and boys'
voices seemed unacceptable to him. In
the end, the church authorities
permitted women to sing on the condition
that they wore black suits and hats to
conceal their gender! Conservative
spirits must likewise have been startled
by the orchestral effects and the
expressive diversity of the entire
battery of instruments: the unremitting
sound of the big drums in the Dies
irae is like regular grenade
explosions, in the Tuba mirum
the trumpets sound the call to the Last
Judgment from all directions, and the
bass solo in the Mors stupebit
opens up terrifying spiritual depths.
On the other hand, Verdi also emphasized
that "this Mass must not be sung like an
opera, i.e. phrasing and dynamics that
are appropriate in the theatre are not
at all what I want here. The same
applies to the setting of accents, etc."
In this context, though, we must not
overlook the fact that there were
obviously widely differing ideas about
what exactly was 'operatic' in different
parts of Europe. Thus Verdi found the
performance in Paris particularly
successful thanks to "accents and
phrasing less theatrical than is
customary in Italy". The critic August
Guckeisen reported that the performance
given in 1877 in Cologne was "strange
and far removed from our national
feeling" as Verdi had used "sharper and
more piercing sounds than we are
accustomed to in Germany".
Nor must we forget that Hanslick in
Vienna criticized the “theatrical
singing” of the four soloists, even
though Teresa Stolz, Maria Waldmann,
Giuseppe Capponi und Ormindo Masini had
already sung the Requiem under the
composer’s baton countless times and
were completely familiar with the
maestro’s intentions. (Hanslick:
“...when a female singer appeals to
Jesus Christ, it shouldn’t sound as if
she was pining for her lover...”) The
best solution is to abandon the old
dispute about whether or not the Requiem
is 'operatic' and simply agree that this
is an undogrnatic work in which Verdi
deals in timeless and profoundly moving
fashion with the subject of human
mortality. Indeed, the mood of utter
bewilderment expressed by the final
“Libera me”, now scarcely more than a
stammer, is alarmingly relevant to the
present-day listener. What, after all,
do we actually want to be saved from?
One could see the ‘Last Judgment’ as a
metaphor for human dogmatism in the
widest sense: self-opinionated
individuals, institutionalised religions
and political systems presume to pass
judgment on what is right and what is
wrong. And they find themselves in the
dilemma of having to use means that are
wrong to achieve what they believe is
right.
We live in a time when Man finds his
very existence under greater threat than
ever before from globalisation and from
new biological and nuclear weapons
developed by the superpowers. Against
this background, it is nothing if not
relevant when Verdi denounces the
fundamental evils of human civilisation:
the tendency of individuals to revolve
around their axis, the crazed beliefin
progress for its own sake and the
adherence to outmoded ways of thinking.
All the themes of the Requiem are built
up on three groups of motifs that can be
assigned to these three areas:
progressive dissection of triads and
chords (first found in the strings at
the opening of the work), motifs
reminiscent of the psalmody that seem to
turn on their own axis and maintain a
constant recitation tone (e.g. the first
choral section "Requiem") and
motifs-generally in the space of a
third-that are reminiscent of Gregorian
chant (first heard in “Te decet hymnus"
in the Introitus). Seventy years
earlier, Ludwig van Beethoven had
moulded the musical process of insight
in his Eroica symphony from
precisely the same groups of motifs.
Such compositions do offer a solution to
the human dilemma, even if Verdi sounds
undeniably pessimistic at the end of the
Requiem: we need to stop thinking that
we ‘know it all', we need to abandon
standing still arid to free our souls
through positive creativity as
represented in music by the endless
diversity of rhythm, melody and harmony.
We need to give ourselves to life so
that life can reach fulfilment in death.
Benjamin-Gunnar
Cohrs, 2005
Translation:
Clive
Williams
Notes
on the score and the
performing practice
The Milan publishers Ricordi brought out
a facsimile reprint of the autograph
score in 1941. The present recording
follows the text of the new critical
edition by David Rosen (University of
Chicago Press/Ricordi, Milan 1990) as
part of the Complete Verdi Edition,
WGV III/1. This also contains appendices
with the earlier version of the Libera
me and the Liber scriptus,
but these have not been used for this
recording. Rosen draws particular
attention to the matter of the
instrument to be used for the lowest
brass part as a question to which there
is no clear answers. The composer
himself wanted an instrument for this
part that, as he said in a letter to
Ricordi on 24th December 1871, "will
blend it whith the others" (by which he
meant the other trombones). He was
particularly allergic to the bass
bombardon, which was often used as e
replacement for the ophicleide that was
gradually disappearing from orchestras
in the second half of the 19th century.
This prompted Nikolaus Hernoncourt to
use not a tuba, as is generally done
todey, her instead the bass valve
trombone now generally used for the
cimbasso parts in Verdi's operas.
In his performing practice Hernoncourt
paid particular attention to the fact
that Verdi evolved his highly
differentiated instructions on dynamics
not from the forte, as is customary
nowadays, but from a state of silence.
Moreover, surveys here shown that the
exaggerated portamento so beloved of
today's singers was not actually desired
by Verdi at all. Thus the soloists do
not use portamento here unless the score
specifically calls for it. The chorus
should be particularly strong in numbers
in the middle parts. What Verdi wrote
about Aida doubtless applied to
the Requiem as well: he wanted "to
achieve the colossal volume of sound hat
moderates the shrill sound of the
sopranos". Verdi's frequently ignored
instruction to heve certain passages
sung by only four choral singers to a
part was likewise strictly followed
here. Originally, the long Dies irae
was followed in the lityrgy by the
gospel and the sermon; Verdi accordingly
always took a longer break when
performing the work in a concert hall,
for practical reesons if nothing else.
This gave time to change around the
choir for the double-choir layout that
the Sanctus called for - which,
incidentally, was an obvious reference
to the passage in the Book of Isaiah
where "duo seraphim" recite the hymn of
praise to each other from different
clouds. This recording is spread over
two CD’s, doing justice to Verdi's
division into two parts of 45 and 40
minutes lenght respectively - something
often neglected nowadays.
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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