March 9, 2014 - Lent 1

Aus tiefer Noth BWV 687 - J.S. Bach
Elijah: "He That Shall Endure to the End"
                                                              - Felix Mendelssohn 
Mass No. 2 in G Major: "Agnus Dei" - Franz Schubert
Prelude and Fugue in d minor: "Prelude"
                                                               - Felix Mendelssohn

Hymns: #150 Aus der tiefe, LEVAS #188 It is Well,
              # 143 Erhalt uns, Herr

The music this week comes from German (and Austrian) masters from the Baroque to the Romantic period. During Lent I have, again, chosen to feature the music of J.S. Bach. This is a constant source of inspiration and surprise. I find that no matter how much of it I play and how much I listen to I am constantly able to find something new in the way that Bach has treated the texts that he sets, be it for organ or for choir. There are so many extra-musical elements inside the music of Bach that I am constantly intrigued by that I am able to play the same piece over and over and never get bored. At times his music can be more meaningful for the performer than the listener but the informed performer can glean a great deal of inspiration from the music as well.

The prelude is J.S. Bach’s setting of Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu dir BWV 687 from his monumental work Clavier-Übung III. This piece, sometimes called the “German Organ Mass” was composed between 1735 and 1736 and published in 1739. It is a collection of which is bookended by the Prelude and Fugue in Eb (St. Anne) and contains twenty-one chorale preludes and four duets. The work runs the gamut from “simple” chorales for manuals only to the much more complex six-part setting of this chorale (BWV 686) with a double pedal part. The first nine chorales are based on the Lutheran mass while the next twelve are the Lutheran catechism. Aus tiefer falls in the section on penitence as the singer asks God’s help and forgiveness. This setting of Psalm 130 by Martin Luther appears many times in the work of Bach and other German composers including Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) who used it in his third organ sonata.
In an effort to lighten the load on the choir (which hardly seems possible this time of year) I have been program movements of Mendelssohn’s Elijah which we will be performing for this year’s Celebration of the Arts. He That Shall Endure to the End is the Act II chorus that falls after what I usually think of as the best known part of the work. Elijah is exhausted and dejected and the trio of angels sings Lift Thine Eyes followed by the full choir singing He Watching Over Israel. An angel of the Lord appears to Elijah to tell him that must go to Horeb and Elijah responds that he wishes God would demonstrate his power and the angel instructs him to Rest in the Lord. The choir closes this scene with the simple yet powerful chorus He that Shall endure to the end shall be saved.  This text made me think of the stories of Jewish prisoners performing Elijah in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Despite the fact that Mendelssohn was a Jewish born composer and the grandson of a rabbi and that the statue of him in Leipzig had been destroyed during the Nazi regime, there were clips of a performance used in a propaganda film by the Third Reich. This text is even more poignant with the idea that a performance of this work at the camp had to be cancelled because the entire chorus was put on a train to Auschwitz. It is not difficult to see why this text and this story would resonate with the imprisoned Jews at the concentration camp.
In addition to his choral works, Mendelssohn wrote symphonies, concertos, and keyboard works. Although his organ works are few in number (three preludes and fugues and six sonatas) they occupy a prominent place in the canon of organ literature. The preludes and fugues were not necessarily pieces that were conceived in pairs but rather were the outgrowth of Mendelssohn’s improvisations at the console. At the urging of Thomas Attwood, a renowned English organist he agreed to have them published and (like the Bach preludes and fugues) they were paired based on key with little regard to whether they matched stylistically. This prelude is a free virtuosic piece reminiscent in some ways of the free North German praeludium of Buxtehude. The sweeping gestures and arpeggiated chords cause the piece to rely on harmonies rather than a melodic idea for their basis. It is an emotional piece and lends itself to the beginning of Lent.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828), like Mendelssohn lived only a very short time but contributed greatly to music history with his symphonies, choral and chamber works and especially his lieder. His Mass No. 2 in G Major D167 was composed in just five days during the first week of March in 1815 for his parish in Liechtenthal. The Agnus Dei features the soprano and bass soloists alternating with the choir adding its petition for mercy “miserere nobis” and for peace “dona nobis pacem.”