It's good to be back after a hiatus of nearly two months. A fair bit has happened, not to mention winter turning into spring. A quick postscript on the Beethoven event which I mentioned in a previous post. The concert, named Beethoven Nine In A Day, took place on Saturday 20 August at the Melbourne Town Hall, and was a stunning success.
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) stage crew did an amazing job of cramming around 400 singers of SIX different choirs from around Victoria on the Town Hall stage. The choirs that participated were:
- MSO Chorus;
- Royal Melbourne Philharmonic;
- Melbourne University Choral Society;
- Box Hill Chorale;
- Heidelberg Choral Society; and
- Ballarat Choral Society.
Tomorrow, MUCS will be back at the Town Hall for another concert, this time with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic (RMP) Choir and Orchestra (who are actually hosting the event) and the Australian Catholic University (ACU) Choral Society, to perform Sir Edward Elgar's masterpiece The Dream of Gerontius.
Although Elgar objected to its classification, The Dream of Gerontius is regarded as an oratorio. An oratorio is like an opera or musical, the big difference is that oratorios tend to be religious in character, and there are no costumes or acting. The most famous oratorio is Handel's Messiah, from which we get the beloved Hallelujah Chorus. Gerontius ranks alongside Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah as one of the Big Three when it comes to oratorios performed in Britain.
Although it had a difficult beginning, The Dream of Gerontius is now recognized as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, work in English music history. To go into what makes this such a great work would take far too much time. Here I will simply present a brief history of the work, and then go into some detail about the amazing music, for which Gerontius is rightly loved and admired.
The Dream of Gerontius is presented in two parts, which are usually performed without an interval. The whole work runs for approximately 100 minutes; Part One is about 35-40 minutes and Part Two around 60-65 minutes. Gerontius is actually a poem written in 1865 by John Henry Newman, a Catholic priest who was originally Anglican. Elgar, a devout Roman Catholic, was familiar with the poem and had considered setting the poem to music for some years. He finally started work on this project in response to an invitation to compose a piece for the Birmingham Triennial Festival in 1900.
The story revolves around the soul of Gerontius, an ordinary Catholic whose name is derived from the Greek geron, which means "old man". In Part One, he prays for deliverance from the agony of death with his friends before finally giving up the ghost, which brings Part One to a close. In Part Two, Gerontius' soul is escorted by a guardian angel to face righteous judgment at the throne of God. Along the way he passes jeering demons and glorious angels, before his soul is cleansed in one fell swoop of seeing God. Finally, the angel settles Gerontius in the lake of Purgatory before bidding farewell with the promise of glory at God's second coming.
The premiere of Gerontius at the 1900 Birmingham Festival is one of the most famous disasters in music history, and it didn't help that the original chorus master had died just days before the performance. From my conductor's narrative of the event, the performance ground to a halt at least FOUR times, most of it I suspect at the tricky and truly hellish "Demon's Chorus". Elgar was so distraught by this apparent failure that he swore never again to write a sacred piece.
The premiere of Gerontius at the 1900 Birmingham Festival is one of the most famous disasters in music history, and it didn't help that the original chorus master had died just days before the performance. From my conductor's narrative of the event, the performance ground to a halt at least FOUR times, most of it I suspect at the tricky and truly hellish "Demon's Chorus". Elgar was so distraught by this apparent failure that he swore never again to write a sacred piece.
Thankfully, many critics could see past the failings of the performers and could see the genius of the composition. A German conductor, Julius Buths, arranged for a German translation of the work and premiered it in Dusseldorf in 1901. This time, it was a success. Eventually Gerontius would return to England, where it still faced considerable adversity because of its strong Catholic tone.
England in 1900 was majority Anglican, and Catholics were often treated as second-class citizens. As one composer derisively noted, the work "stank of incense". That Gerontius has survived intact to this day is testament to the intensely spiritual power of the music, which I shall explore in the next post.
Before I finish, a quick congratulations to the Geelong Football Club, who defeated Collingwood this afternoon to win their third premiership in five years. Very impressive.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
