Liszt had always been devout but his faith moved to a higher level in 1865
when he took minor orders – short of becoming a priest – in the church and
could then be known as the Abbé Liszt. He was also interested in improving
the standard of composition for the church, which was then at a low ebb. He
composed around sixty religious works. The two largest, the oratorios
The Legend of St Elisabeth and
Christus enjoy the very
occasional outing and recording but his smaller religious works are almost
unknown. Here we have ten of them and we can make up our own mind. This disc
is in effect a companion to the volume of sheet music of Liszt’s shorter
sacred works issued in 2001 by the publishing arm of the same company,
Carus, with the title
Zwölf Stücke (twelve pieces), as all but the
last appear in it.
First impressions are that the idiom is very close to that of Bruckner’s
motets, which are much better known ,and also at points to Wagner’s
Parsifal. This is a bit unfair, as Liszt established the idiom
first, which was taken up by Wagner and then by Bruckner from Wagner. There
is the occasional reference to Gregorian chant and Palestrina, which Liszt
regarded as the basis of church music. However, Liszt seems to have little
interest in
a cappella writing and all but one of these pieces have
an organ accompaniment. The harmony is rich and chromatic, with some
surprising modulations and the writing for voices is sometimes very
elaborate, with two of the pieces being in seven parts.
These works are very varied. Six are in Latin, the remainder in German.
The two settings of
The Lord’s Prayer are strongly contrasted: the
first, in German is for seven voices with overlapping lines, contrast
between tutti and thinner passages and full development. The second, in
Latin, is half the length and is a simple homophonic setting. There are some
very short pieces:
Qui seminant, which is very late and seems to
quote from the opening of Act III of
Parsifal, transforms the
opening tearful chromatic motif into a joyful one to suit the words. The
Marian antiphon
Salve Regina is most intricately worked in its
short compass. The
Ave Maria in A, one of three settings Liszt made
of this text, is a gentle and lovely piece in a swaying triple time.
Of the longer works,
Mariengarten is another late work with
strange, unsettled and unsettling harmony with much use of augmented chords.
Die Seligpreisungen (
The Beatitudes) features a solo
baritone alternating with the seven-part choir. And the jewel of the
collection is the last piece, a setting of
Psalm 137, or rather of
most of it, omitting the cursing verses at the end as do many performances —
although not Walton in
Belshazzar’s Feast. This is for women’s
voices with solo violin, harp and organ. It comes from rather earlier in
Liszt’s career and the composer himself rightly said it had a “dark,
mystical tone colour”. The unusual forces must mean that this cannot get
many performances but I live in hope that a choir which decides to mount a
performance of Britten’s
Ceremony of Carols, which is for women’s
voices and harp, in a church, might consider putting this on the same
programme. This is not included in the Carus volume but they publish it
separately.
The pieces are expertly performed by quite a large – thirty voices –
professional choir. This is obviously not the kind of choir a parish church
or even a cathedral would mount but it is worth accepting the compromise
because the pieces are some of them quite difficult in their chromaticism
and it is good to have these absolutely secure performances. The disc is
rather short measure: I fancy there would have been room for at least one of
the remaining three works in the Carus volume, but there are very few
alternatives and for some of these are the only performances listed as
currently available. The church acoustic is supportive to the vocal lines.
The booklet is very helpful on the musical background to the pieces but the
writer fails to identify the liturgical occasions for some of the pieces.
So, for the record I should point out that
Qui seminant is the
Tract for the Mass for many martyrs when in Lent, and the text of
Mariengarten is not as obscure as he says it is. It comes, as he
rightly says, from the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach. This is in The
Apocrypha, which is often omitted from Protestant Bibles. It is titled
Ecclesiasticus in the King James version but
Ben Sira in
some modern versions. However, it is part of the regular canon in the Roman
Catholic church, and adherents would know it even better as one of the
readings in the Little Hours of the Virgin Mary, a popular devotion for lay
people; hence its title here. The booklet gives original Latin or German
texts with English translations for all and German ones for the Latin.
However, the English versions, though accurate enough, are not one of them
the standard one, a curious fit of perversity. Still, this is a most
valuable disc and I hope it encourages some church music directors to
include some of these pieces as motets or anthems.
Stephen Barber
