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Alexander KASTALSKY (1856 –1926) Requiem Anna Dennis, Soprano • Joseph Beutel, Bass-baritone Cathedral Choral Society • The Clarion Choir The Saint Tikhon Choir • Kansas City Chorale Orchestra of St. Luke’s • Leonard Slatkin Alexander Alexander Kastalsky (1856–1926) Requiem for Fallen Brothers (1856–1926) KASTALSKY Alexander Kastalsky’s Requiem for Fallen Brothers stands hears strains of Japanese and Hindu melodies. As as the only large-scale choral-orchestral work written “Memory eternal” is intoned, the military bands join in, one Requiem for Fallen Brothers (1914–17) specifically in response to the unprecedented loss of life hears artillery salutes, and the music takes on the bright 1 2 Requiem aeternam 5:44 and devastation brought about by the First World War. colours glorifying the fallen heroes.’ 2 As the fighting began in the summer of 1914, A detailed libretto compiled by the composer for Kyrie eleison 5:49 Kastalsky began planning his Requiem for Fallen future performances envisioned a stage set depicting a 3 Brothers , which he conceived of as a large-scale musical church, the figure of a cardinal, youths in white vestments, Rex tremendae 4:53 4 collage that would combine prayers for the dead drawn three nurses – British, Romanian and Italian – a Greek Ingemisco: Guilty, Now I Pour my Moaning 3:11 from the various liturgical traditions of the Allies – clergyman, groups of Russian peasant women, 5 Orthodox Russia and Serbia, Roman Catholic France and Montenegrins, Serbs and Americans, Hindu soldiers and Confutatis: Средь груды тлеющих костей Italy, and Anglican Britain. priests, a Japanese religious procession, as well as a (‘ Among the Piles of Smouldering Bones ’) 2:14 6 In the West, Alexander Kastalsky and his music are choir that functioned both liturgically and as an ancient Lacrymosa 4:19 still relatively unknown. A student of Tchaikovsky, he was Greek theatrical chorus. This final, 17-movement quasi- 7 appointed to the faculty of the Moscow Synodal School of staged version of the work, however, was never Domine Jesu – Now the Labourer’s Task is O’er 2:51 Church Singing in 1887 and remained affiliated with that performed, as political power in Russia fell into the hands 8 Beati mortui 1:43 institution until it was closed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks. of the Communists, who banned all performances of 9 Just like the First World War, Kastalsky’s effort to sacred music and whose interests ‘had nothing in Hostias 3:29 compose a musical commemoration for its fallen soldiers common with art’. 3 0 Interludium 1:43 became extended and tortuous. By late 1915, an initial As might be expected from the above description, the ! version of the score had been laid out in twelve music of Requiem for Fallen Brothers resembles a rich Sanctus: Holy, Holy, Holy... Blessed is He 3:49 movements for chorus and organ. This 14-movement and varied mosaic. In a number of instances, the @ version was completed in late 1916, and the premiere took composer provided the option of using Latin, English or Agnus Dei 2:36 # place on 7 January 1917, in Petrograd. 1 Following the Russian text, leaving the choice of language to the Какая сладость (‘ What Sweetness in This World ’) 3:17 premiere, the composer added three more movements. discretion of the performers. The performance on this $ The composer himself imagined this work as having recording deliberately uses a number of different Rock of Ages 4:35 % an all-encompassing, dramatic character that contained languages to underscore the multinational and universal Kyrie eleison – Absolve, Domine 5:51 elements of both a sacred mystery play and a civic character of the work. ^ ceremony. The preface to the first published edition The work opens with sombre, brooding melodies Interludium: Hymn to Indra 1:51 & presented the following programme: punctuated with tone clusters in imitation of a Russian Requiem aeternam – Вечная память (‘ Memory Eternal ’) 5:20 ‘Around the spot where the solemn religious Orthodox funeral knell. A herald, singing in Italian, exhorts ceremony of commemoration is taking place, units of those present to pray for all the soldiers fallen for the 1 2 8 & Allied armies are gathered; funereal chants of different common cause. The chorus enters with the well-known Sung texts: Anonymous , 1 2 3 4 6 7 9 ! @ $ % & nations are heard intermittently, at times Russian, at times Russian Orthodo1x melody funeral kontakion , With the Requiem Mass text 5 # , 7 Catholic, now Serbian, now English; one language Saints Give Rest , sung to the Latin text of the Roman supplants another; from time to time trumpet calls of Requiem Mass. Alexei Tolstoy, 1817–1875 , John Ellerton, 1826–1893 , 2 Orthodox liturgy , Augustus Montague Toplady, 1740–1778 different armies are heard, along with drum beats, and the The Kyrie that follows was initially conceived as an $ sound of artillery; in the distance one can hear the sobs Orthodox litany – a responsorial form of traditional and Frederick William Faber, 1814 $– 1& 863 , and lamentations of the widows and mothers who have Christian worship. In the present version, Kastalsky Orthodox Memorial Service lost their sons; from the direction of the Asian armies one reworked it into a series of prayerful solo intonations built 1 upon Roman Catholic and Anglican themes, which are contrasting Benedictus on a@n elegant Serbian chant. ‘Memory eternal’ to the fallen soldiers, the chorus takes Concurrently, Kastalsky created a version for answered by the full c3horus in various languages. The text of Agnus Dei is set to the Serbian chant up the refrain ‘Vechnaya pamiat’, first to a Serbian unaccompanied chorus with Church Slavonic text, entitled Rex tremendae seamlessly intersperses Russian melody for the kontakion , With the Saints Give Rest . Like melody, then to a Russian one. The music takes on the Memory Eternal to the Fallen Heroes , which parallels the Znamenny chant melodies ( Thou Alone Art Immortal and the ghostly voices of the fallen soldiers of the preceding character of a stately funeral march out of which emerges Orthodox memorial Panikhida service. This version Beautiful Pascha ) and melodies of Roman Catholic Hosanna , the chromatic yet consonant harmonies that the triumphant motif mi–re–mi–fa–sol–re–mi from the appeared in a premiere recording by The Clarion Choir, Gregorian chant – Dies irae and others—demonstrating the begin and end this movement evoke the heavenly reality sticheron Beautiful Pascha , taken from the Orthodox under Steven Fox, on Naxos 8.573889. close musical kinship between these two species of chant. into which the dead have passed. Paschal service. The bells that earlier tolled for the dead 2 In movement number four, Ingemisco , Kastalsky The following moveme#nt, Какая сладость (‘ What are transformed into the glorious peals celebrating the A. Kastalsky, Bratskoye pominoveniye / Commemoration turns to the solo medium and quotes the melody from a Sweetness in This World’ ) recalls the weeping and the universal Resurrection. fraternelle , for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra. English setting of the Dies irae (‘Day of Wrath’) in the grieving, as well as those still fighting the war, of the ever- At the 1917 premiere of the initial 14-movement Moscow: P. Jurgenson, 1917. Anglican Hymn5al by John B. Dykes. present reality and the inevitability of death. The eloquent version, Kastalsky’s Requiem for Fallen Brothers was Confutatis continues the Latin Dies irae sequence, paraphrase of another one of St John of Damascus’s critically acclaimed as a ‘uniquely Russian Requiem, 3 In the words of Eugene Plotnikoff (1877–1951), the set to an English melody by John Merbecke. As an funeral stichera sung at Orthodox funerals brings back the which [at the same time] gave musical voice to the tears conductor at the Zimin Opera Theatre, who was to conduct alternative text Kastalsky used a fragment from Alexei Dies irae theme and ends with a fervent prayer for the of many nations.’ 4 Today, one hundred years later, we the Moscow premiere of Kastalsky’s Requiem but Tolstoy’s (1817–1875) epic poem Ioann Damaskin (‘John souls of the departed to be received in the heavenly can appreciate this long-lost work as an unprecedented withdrew his intent and emigrated from Russia in 1918. of Damascus’), a passage that paraphrases in Russian mansions. and peerless stylistic collage of multinational musical and one of the funeral verses composed in the 8th century by The United States joined the Allies in April 1917, religious traditions remembering and honouring those 4 Boris Asafyev, ‘A prologue, rather than a conclusion’, in this eminent Syria6n Orthodox hymnographer. while Russia was rocked by two revolutions – the first in who made the ultimate sacrifice. Selected works, volume 5, Moscow: 1957, p. 96. Lacrymosa makes prominent use of Gregorian February of 1917, and the second in October of that same themes, arranged in 6/8 time (Kastalsky knew the Mozart year, as the Bolsheviks seized power. In May of 1917, the Vladimir Morosan Requiem ), which are interspersed with Russian folk-style American Extraordinary Mission, headed by Elihu Root, www.musicarussica.com laments – textless voc7al outpourings of grief. arrived in Petrograd to offer moral support to the new In Domine Jesu , a Russian Orthodox Znamenny Russian government. From the American visitors chant Alleluia (with Latin text) serves as the background Kastalsky learned what music was characteristic of for the bass soloist, who sings an elegiac arioso in Englis8h. funerals in America and proceed$ed to fashion this Kastalsky added the soprano aria Beati mortui material into an additional movement : Chopin’s Funeral after the 1917 premiere. Further expanding the trans- March , Rock of Ages , and Joseph Barnby’s Hark! hark, national character of the work, he introduced two my soul! . The movement concludes with the motif With Romanian Orthodox melodies, one with passages in the Saints Give Rest heard in the first movement.

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