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Mendelssohn’s Elijah

Elijah was commissioned for Birmingham’s Triennial Music Festival

That an eminent German composer should receive a commission from a provincial English music festival may seem remarkable. But Mendelssohn was extremely popular both socially and as a musician; so he was in great demand across Europe, particularly in Britain where he definitely had the status of a celebrity, popular in royal circles. Birmingham at this time being industrially one of the most lively and prosperous centres in the country, had cultural ambitions. By the 1830s it had become a major centre for music, so it was only natural that the festival committee should be interested in inviting such a celebrity to perform in Birmingham’s brand new Town Hall.

Mendelssohn first performed in Birmingham in September 1837 playing his newly composed 2nd Piano Concerto and conducting a performance of St. Paul, which he had composed the previous year. He was such a success that he was invited to return as the Director of the next festival, in 1840. This he duly did, (no doubt arriving by the newly built railway) which led to the Festival commissioning an oratorio from him..

He received the commission in July 1845 for the festival in August 1846. Mendelssohn had started to plan the composition of an oratorio based on the life of Elijah in London in back August 1837. Now his idea was to be realised as a bilingual piece (like Haydn’s Creation), composed to a German text, but to receive its first performance in English.

While working on Elijah, Mendelssohn’s schedule was very busy: he was, after all, Director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which was for six months in the year a full-time job. He also had to find time to compose his cantata Lauda Sion for the Liege Festival. In May, 14 weeks before the premiere, he sent the first part of Elijah to London for the text to be translated into English. Then he departed to perform in festivals in Aachen, Liege and Cologne. He returned in June (10 weeks to go) to Leipzig to his usual hectic social round. Nevertheless – having added an Overture as an afterthought – he completed Elijah, on August 11th.

A week later he was in London for intensive rehearsals. On the 23rd the orchestra, soloists, chorus and press travelled by a special train to Birmingham. The first performance of Elijah was on 26th August in the Town Hall. It was an instant success.

 

Corpus Christi

The poem Lauda Sion was composed in the 13th century by Canoness Juliana of Liège.

She had visions which drew her attention to the fact that there was as yet no text celebrating the Eucharist: the body and blood of Christ. Her friend and colleague, Canon John of Lausanne, brought her visions to the attention of Pope Urban IV who gave his approbation. So she composed the poem Lauda Sion with his blessing and it formed the basis of the new Feast of Corpus Christi.

 

Mendelssohn’s Lauda Sion

Felix Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn was commissioned to write his setting of this text by the authorities in Liège to mark the 600th anniversary of the Feast of Corpus Christi on June 11th 1846.

At the time of this commission, Mendelssohn was working on his oratorio Elijah for the 1846 Birmingham Festival, which was in August. He interrupted his work on that to compose Lauda Sion and to conduct the first performance in St. Martin’s Church, Liège. He must have worked at great speed, because in May and June 1846 he was also directing music festivals in Aachen and Cologne. Elijah was of course completed on time, but with such work-pressure it is not surprising that a year hence he would be recovering from a nervous break-down; indeed thereafter he had only a few months to live.

Beethoven’s Mass in C, op 86

The Mass in C was composed in 1807, a period of prodigious output when Beethoven was in his mid-30s.

He had slowly become adjusted to his deafness, and a protracted, unhappy love-affair had been finished and buried. In 1806, Beethoven composed his 4th Piano Concerto, the 4th symphony, the violin concerto, the Appassionata Sonata and the 3 Rasumovsky quartets. Nearly all his music was received ecstatically and his fame and reputation blossomed across Europe.

On the strength of this, Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy commissioned Beethoven to write a Mass for his wife’s name’s-day on 13th September 1807. Given that Haydn had written six masterpieces marking this occasion in previous years, and Beethoven had not written a single mass until now, this caused him some consternation. Beethoven’s friend Johann Nepomuk Hummel had succeeded Haydn as the Esterhazys’ Kappellmeister and had written slightly less distinguished works for the occasion, but Beethoven was, rightly, nervous of comparison with Haydn.

The Mass he produced proved inventive, novel and striking – quite different from anything Haydn or Hummel could have written. Although Beethoven was pleased with his work it did not find favour with the Prince. The Prince, indeed made a barbed comment about it; to make matters worse, Hummel laughed, so ending a long friendship. But there was no stopping the flow of masterpieces from Beethoven’s pen: his next work was to complete the 5th Symphony.

Parody

In 1723 Bach was appointed Kantor at St. Thomas’s Church, Leipzig. For the next six years he brought his small stock of church cantatas up to about 300, (which was five more or less complete sets of cantatas for the Church Year). This provided for all his needs for his work at St. Thomas’s for the rest of his time there.

When called upon to produce new music, he was in the habit of taking movements from earlier works and adapting them, reworking them where necessary. Some movements underwent several re-workings. The term parody signifies music which has been recycled in this manner.

Some of Bach’s greatest music has a substantial parody element. An example is the Mass in B minor. At the accession of the new Elector, Bach presented him with the Kyrie & Gloria of the Mass, (Kyrie and Gloria being the parts of the Lutheran Mass set to music). Then in 1748-49 he added the Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei, completing what we now know as the B minor Mass. His reason for doing this is not clear*, but there was no new music: it is in effect an anthology of some of the finest bits of his earlier cantatas, the words being replaced by those of the ordinary of the mass. Some of his adaptations are quite radical (such as the wonderfully moving end of the Crucifixus, adapted from the cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen).

* It is thought by some that it was in support of a job application for Dresden.

 

Thomasschule

Thomasschule, Leipzig

The Thomasschule was a boarding school attached to Leipzig’s principal church, St. Thomas’s (the Thomaskirche).

 Bach, as Kantor, was its director. The pupils at the school were selected on
musical aptitude, and it was the Kantor’s responsibility to select them and train them as singers. Instrumental training was provided for the most able of them, and all had to learn Latin. Bach refused to teach Latin, so he had to pay for a Latin tutor out of his own salary.

The Kantor, had to provide all the music for the four principal churches in Leipzig, and any other music the City Council required. To aid in this, the council employed some professional musicians: four wind-players, three fiddlers and ‘an apprentice’.

Most of Bach’s instrumentalists were drawn from amongst the Collegium Musicum, students at the University or pupils at the school. The age-range of the school’s pupils was from 12 to 23. At that time boys’ voices ‘broke’ at about 17 or 18, so in fact Bach had a pool of very able, experienced singers at the school; and his band was of high standing, despite the stinginess of the ‘official’ provision.

The Thomasschule placed severe restrictions on Bach’s choice of musicians to perform his music. However, the Collegium Musicum was a pool of highly competent musicians, some of them virtuosos of their instrument. It was from the Collegium Musicum that Bach drew his musicians for the secular cantatas.

A piece of ‘trivia’ not trivial at the time: on the day after the performance of no.215 Bach’s virtuoso trumpeter and the leader of the Leipzig Stadtpfeifer (town wind-band), Gottfried Reiche, died as a result of his musical exertions. Such are the demands of the first trumpet part of the Christmas Oratorio.

 

Leipzig Collegium Musicum

A Collegium Musicum was a music society.

With the burgeoning of bourgeois culture, particularly in prosperous and vibrant centres such as Leipzig, there began a slow shift away from music being made exclusively for The Court or The Church. Art music was becoming accessible to a much wider public. An example of this is the Music Hall in Dublin where Messiah received its first performance. Collegia musica were a vital part of this development.

Collegia musica brought musicians together to make music, and were often purely amateur in status. In Hamburg, Georg Philipp Telemann set up a collegium musicum in his own home.  It was Telemann who founded the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, in 1702 (when he was also associated with St. Thomas’s for a time). This became the focal point for professional musicians, and it was an organisation of real standing within the city, informal and voluntary institution though it was. Bach’s becoming director of the Collegium does not seem to have brought him any financial rewards, but it did greatly widen his scope, compared to the restrictions placed on him by his ‘day-job’ at the Thomasschule.

 

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio

Friedrich August II

The music for the Christmas Oratorio was not originally written for the Church but for  the name-day of Friedrich August II, the new Elector of Saxony – 3rd August,1733.  Bach, in his position as Director of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, began a series of celebratory secular cantatas to mark the occasion.

Three of these are lost, including 215a (for the Elector’s coronation as King of Poland on 19th February 1734), but cantata no. 213, written for the Elector’s heir, does remain, along with 214 (for the Electress) and 215 (for the Elector). The music is festive and virtuosic; most was performed al fresco to complement the fireworks!

The Christmas Oratorio is a parody work based on these secular cantatas. It consists of six cantatas, the first of which was performed on Christmas Day 1734, and the last at Epiphany 1735.

Royal recognition

By 1842 Mendelssohn was a major celebrity in Britain, and became a favourite of the royal family. In June and July, he visited the queen and Prince Albert at Buckingham Palace, where he improvised (on Rule, Britannia!), and accompanied the queen singing Lieder both by him and his sister. He arranged seven of his Songs without words as piano duets for them and The Scottish Symphony would later be rededicated to Queen Victoria.