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Music City Dresden Program # 6 A Melody Goes Round the World: The “Dresden Amen“ in Music of the 19th Century Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Parsifal: beginning of Act one 0:37 Franz Crass (soloist) Bayreuth Festival Orchestra Cond: Pierre Boulez LC 00173 Dtsch. Grammophon, DGG 435 718-2,(CD 1, Take 2) Welcome once again to “Music City Dresden.“ This is Michael Rothe. This time, the theme of our program is a musical theme: a six-note melody that had its origin in church services at the court of Dresden. An entire program just about six notes? Well, that memorable sequence had a profound influence on a number of composers throughout the 19th century, so we’re titling this program “A Melody Goes Round the World.“ Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Parsifal: beginning of Act one 0:24 Franz Crass (soloist) Bayreuth Festival Orchestra Cond: Pierre Boulez LC 00173 Dtsch. Grammophon, DGG 435 718-2,(CD 1, Take 2) After a lengthy prelude to Richard Wagner’s last opera, those are the first words we hear in what the composer called his “festival play for the consecration of the stage.“ Parsifal premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1882, and for many years after, it was heard only in that temple to his art. Those words are: “Did you hear the call? Now give thanks to God that He has called you to hear it.“ They go along with a kind of fanfare intoned by the trombones. The scene is outside the Castle of the Grail, and that admonition is sung by the grail knight Gurnemanz to the squires. The melody has the effect of a wake-up call. After having sounded out repeatedly in the prelude, it’s reinforced here as the central Leitmotiv of the opera. It’s the “grail motif.“ Richard Wagner Parsifal: Overture 2:22 Bayreuth Festival Orchestra Cond: Pierre Boulez LC 00173 Dtsch. Grammophon, DGG 435 718-2, (CD 1, Take 1) Interwoven with other motifs, this sequence of tones represents the sphere of the Holy Grail, -2- that sacred vessel into which, according to legend, the blood of Christ flowed from the mortal wound he received on the cross, from a lance thrust in His side. An important part of the religious character of the grail motif is the fact that it is based on traditional tonal sequences associated with religion and liturgy. It’s a direct quote of a particular ascending sequence of five tones – the last one repeated, thus six notes in all. The specific origins of that sequence of tones is unknown. But it was in common use in Christian churches at least since the beginning of the 19th century particularly in Saxony. It’s known as the “Dresden Amen.“ Anon. Dresden Amen 0:10 Karthäuser Choir Cologne Cond: Peter Neumann (privat) (Aufnahme mit Sende-Erlaubnis an Autor) Richard Wagner most likely first encountered this melody in services at the Church of the Cross at the Dresden Court. He’d entered the church school as a nine-year-old boy. Attending church services was part of his duties, though even then he would have preferred to spend his free time at the opera. The “Dresden Amen“ must have made a lasting impression on the boy, for he later used the melody repeatedly in his compositions, from his earliest operas to his final one, Parsifal. Wagner wasn’t the first 19th-century composer to be fascinated by this traditional musical figure and to lift it into the realm of art music. The ascending motif suggests a gesture of eyes or hands being raised upward to heaven. That doubtless contributes to its powerful spiritual effect. In a larger sense, it also represents a trend in 19th century aesthetics, particularly in Romanticism, to transfer the forms and content of religion to the worldly realm. In the view of that time, religious institutions and rituals had become shallow and empty. Art became the inheritor of religion. The average cultured person was just as likely to seek spiritual values in the concert hall as in church. The “Dresden Amen,“ once it had found its way into art music, became something of an export hit of Dresden’s local musical culture. The melody originated in the latter half of the 18th century at the Catholic church of the Saxon court in Dresden. It came to be used as a traditional responsory, a sung answer by the chorus to the priest during mass. Replacing centuries-old Gregorian “Amen“ formulas, the melody became a popular congregational response also at other points of the church ritual. Echoes of this genuine Dresden musical product soon began to be heard in ever wider circles. That’s because festive services at the Court Church had a wide reputation. Attending one was de rigeur for any visitor to the city from about 1800 on, non-Catholics included. The often-used musical phrase that came to be known as the “Dresden Amen,“ -3- with its simple yet powerfully suggestive sequence of tones, left a lasting impression on visitors, especially musicians. One of them was Carl Loewe, considered the 19th century’s most important composer of art songs after Schubert. Loewe’s specialty was settings of long narrative ballads. One of them, Der Gang zum Eisenhammer (March to the Iron Hammer), includes a scene in a church. The historical record shows that Loewe attended church services in Dresden during a visit in 1819 – but we’d also know that from his use of the “Dresden Amen“ in that ballad of the Iron Hammer. A later example: a duet for piano and violin, one of many by Louis Spohr, who was long considered Beethoven’s true successor. Lest anyone miss his use of the same theme in the Adagio, Spohr planted verbal references to it in the score. He called the 1836 piece “Echoes of a Journey to Dresden and the Saxon Switzerland“ and wrote in the heading of that movement, “A scene in the Court Church at Dresden.“ Unfortunately no recordings are available of either of those works. As for the familiar melody’s liturgical use, it eventually went beyond the Catholic Church to become something of a fixture in Protestant services throughout Saxony as well. Wagner’s exposure to it as a boy was at the Lutheran Church of the Cross in Dresden. More about Wagner later. I’d like to turn now to the most prominent use of the theme in a symphony. The composer: Felix Mendelssohn. The Symphony No. 5, the “Reformation“ Symphony, happens to be the least- known of his symphonies. Which takes nothing away from its effect. It had a historical impetus: the 300th anniversary, in 1830, of the Confession of Augsburg, a central document of the Reformation. Mendelssohn’s use of the “Dresden Amen“ gives even greater ecumenical range to the melody, which by then had become common cultural property. We’ll hear it twice in this excerpt from the first movement. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, 1st movement 3:05 Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig Cond: Kurt Masur LC 06019, Teldec Classics 3984-21236-2 A simple melody, coming from Catholic masses in one locality in Germany – it happens to be the crown jewel of Germany’s musical cities, as we’re discovering this series from Deutsche Welle Radio – making the leap to a symphonic masterwork. And not only there. The “Dresden Amen” also turns up in the music of two other titans of the 19th century: Bruckner and Mahler. Bruckner’s devout Catholicism is the whole foundation of his art and the core of his symphonies. His religious impulse is expressed, for example, in many heavenward-ascending harmonic progressions. In fact, you could call Bruckner’s entire musical work one great sonic Dona nobis pacem. That description certainly fits his last symphony, the Ninth. Bruckner died before he could complete the fourth movement, but the last movement he did complete, the Adagio, seems a fitting final statement. On the score, Bruckner wrote the dedication: An den lieben Gott (literally, “To My Dear God”). With apocalyptic clashes, sudden stops, interludes of paradisial lyric repose – breakdown and -4- breakthrough – the Adagio, seems to embody Bruckner’s conviction that every soul must go through its Golgatha before it can attain immortality. To express that, he could have found no better tool than the “Dresden Amen.“ Bruckner encountered it probably not directly in Dresden, but through the music of Wagner and in Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony. His use of it in his opus ultimum is more than just quotation. With it he rounds off the main theme of that final movement which had begun in an agitated mood; anxiety is transformed into prayer. Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) Symphony No. 9: 3rd movement (beginning) 1:09 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Cond: Daniel Barenboim LC 04281 WEA International, 2564 61891-2 Dating from a few years before the Bruckner Ninth is Gustav Mahler’s First, and as you might suspect at this point, this symphony too makes use of the “Dresden Amen.“ We hear it first in the middle of the final movement and later, after a great crescendo leading to a startling modulation, that resolution to the tonic D Major chord – the sonic foundation of the whole work, so to speak – strikes us as a breakthrough to victory. Mahler himself said that he wanted that chord to sound wie vom Himmel gefallen (as if it had fallen from heaven) and als käme er aus einer anderen Welt (as if coming from another world). Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) Symphony No. 1: 4th movement (excerpt) 4:12 Dresden Philharmonic Cond: Herbert Kegel LC 06203, Berlin Classics 0090382 BC There’s a profound transformation in the way Mahler quotes our familiar theme.

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