Christus Factus Est - Anton Bruckner
The music for this Sunday comes from the Austrio-German
tradition. It seems to have worked out that this week two of the three hymns
are attributed to Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809). The prelude and postlude are
both taken from a piece that is based on Austria,
the closing hymn. The choir is singing The
Heavens are Telling (not the Haydn from The
Creation, but the Beethoven arrangement) and Bruckner’s Christus Factus Est.
The prelude and postlude are taken from John Knowles Paine’s
Concert Variations on the “Austrian Hymn.”
The piece is a theme followed by four variations and a concluding fugue. The fugue
will serve as the postlude for Sunday. The hymn tune is present in a highly
ornamented form in the subject. This winds its way through a four voice texture
with episodes before a long “C” pedal point gives way to a pedal cadenza which
takes us to the triumphal full voiced reentry of the hymn tune.
For the prelude I am playing two of the other four
variations, the third which is a quiet meditation in a minor key, and the first
which presents the tune in the right hand with the left hand and pedal dialoguing
back and forth on a jaunty rhythmic motif.
John Knowles Paine (1839-1909) is one of the first great
American organists and is attributed with introducing the organ works of J.S.
Bach to the U.S. He was born to a family of instrument
makers in Maine. In 1856 the families business was destroyed in a fire. This
tragedy combined with the death of his father soon after caused Paine to have
to raise the money for his studies in Germany by giving recitals. By 1859 he
had earned enough money to move to Berlin where he studied with Karl August
Haupt. He returned to the US in 1861 and settled in Boston at the West Church,
a position that he held for just a few months. The 23 year old Paine was
appointed organist and choirmaster of Harvard’s Appleton Chapel. Paine
established a well-respected music program at Harvard which set itself as a
model for other university music programs despite the fact that he himself
never earned a college degree.
The gradual anthem is an arrangement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s
(1770-1827) Opus 48, No. 4 Die Ehre
Gottes aus der Natur. This is the fourth in a “bundle” of six songs on
texts by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715-1769), an 18th century
poet and novelist of the German Enlightenment. He was educated at the
University of Leipzig and became highly regarded for his writings which simply
and clearly taught their readers a moral. Die
Ehre Gottes aus der Natur (The Glory of God in Nature) remains one of his most
popular pieces to this day. These pieces were originally composed for voice and
piano in 1801 or 1802 and dedicated to Count Johann Georg von Browne, one of
Beethoven’s early Viennese patrons. The setting for choir and organ features
the choir switching back and forth between passages sung heartily in unison
with softer lighter lines in four parts while the organ fills out the chords
underneath.
The communion anthem is Anton Bruckner’s (1824-1896) setting
of Christus Factus Est, the gradual
for Palm Sunday. This piece was dedicated to Father Otto Loidol of the
Benedictine Monastery of Kremsmünster to whom Locus Iste was also dedicated. This is more symphonic in style than
Locus Iste. In this motet the singers
climb through various keys to reach a climax only then to drop back down and
begin again. His imaginative use of text painting is evident through such
things as his treatment of super omne
nomen (above all names). By having the sopranos climb by half step to their
highest note in the piece while the altos leap up a tenth he illustrates the
exaltation of Christ vocally. The beauty of this piece is in its rich harmonies
and stark dynamic contrasts. It requires a great deal of sensitivity and
musicality but is at the same time incredibly moving and rewarding to both
singer and listener.
For further discussion
of Bruckner see the post for June 10, 2012.
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