The raft of Medusa (oratory)

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Work data
Title: The raft of the Medusa
Théodore Géricault: The Raft of the Medusa, 1819

Théodore Géricault : The Raft of the Medusa , 1819

Shape: “Oratorio vulgare e militare” in two parts
Original language: German Italian
Music: Hans Werner Henze
Libretto : Ernst Schnabel
Premiere: December 9, 1968
Place of premiere: Radio broadcast of the NDR
Playing time: about 70 minutes
Place and time of the action: Off the coast of Africa,
July 1816
people
  • La Mort, Death ( soprano )
  • Jean-Charles ( baritone )
  • Charon (speaker)
  • Choir of the Living (mixed choir )
  • Choir of the Dead (mixed choir)
  • Children's choir

The raft of Medusa is an oratorio (original name: "Oratorio vulgare e militare") in two parts for soprano, baritone, speaking voice, mixed choir, nine boys and orchestra by Hans Werner Henze (music) with a libretto by Ernst Schnabel . It was created in 1967/1968 and was to be premiered on December 9, 1968 on the stage of the Ernst-Merck-Halle in Hamburg's Planten un Blomen park and broadcast live on NDR radio. However, political protests by the 1968 student movement led to riots and a police operation, so that the performance had to be canceled. Instead, a recording of the dress rehearsal was broadcast on the radio. The failed premiere is considered one of the most spectacular scandals in music history.

action

The content of the oratorio is based on a historical tragedy from 1816: The French King Louis XVIII. had sent a four-ship expedition under the command of Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys to regain control of the former colony of Senegal , which was to be returned by the British under the First Peace of Paris . In addition to the soldiers, there were also invited guests and the entourage with women and children on board the flagship Medusa . The ships set sail on June 17, 1816. On July 2nd, shortly before the finish line, the Medusa ran into a reef in the sandbanks of Arguin . At this point she was far removed from the other ships. Since all attempts to free Medusa failed, they gave up after three days. The officers and guests went to safety in the lifeboats. The remaining 149 people on the team, including women and children, were housed on a raft that was initially towed by the boats. In order to speed up the rescue, however, the commander soon had the ropes cut and left the people on the raft to their fate. During the many days without help, most of them perished from heat, hunger, thirst, madness or in fighting. Cases of cannibalism have also been reported. On July 17, the brig Argus discovered the raft and took in the last fifteen survivors, five of whom subsequently died.

The oratorio follows the reports of two survivors, the surveyor Alexandre Corréard and the surgeon Henri Savigny, as well as the painting Le radeau de la Meduse by Théodore Géricault . The narrators are Charon , the mythological ferryman who brings the dead across the Styx into the underworld, and the crew member Jean-Charles, a mulatto in French service . At the end of the odyssey, he waved a piece of red cloth to draw the rescue ship's attention to the raft, but then fell into agony from which he no longer woke up. The soprano represents the omnipresent death, which calls the people on the raft to itself with siren-like enticing chants. This dying is made visible by the spatial arrangement of the choir and the orchestra: "On the left of the stage the living and the wind instruments, on the right the dead and the strings, in the middle the drums." From the ninth section onwards, most of the choir singers wander to and fro from the side of the living to that of the dead.

The total of seventeen movements of the oratorio have the following names:

First part: the embarkation for sinking

  • I. Prologue of Charon
  • II. Motto - "From the port ..."
  • III. Order and sample roll - "Vive le roi!"
  • IV. Journal of the crossing - "The sea was still ..."
  • V. One answer - "The banks of Arguin ..."
  • VI. Attempt to rescue - "Three days of fighting for the ship ..."
  • VII. Disembarkation - "We stood at the railing ..."
  • VIII. Ballad of Treason - "We looked up ..."
  • IX. Singing with new voices - "Per correr migliori acque ..."
  • X. Instructions for the second day - "The second day came ..."

Part two: the ninth night and the morning

  • XI. Establishing the situation - "An end in sight ..."
  • XII. Motto - "How many kingdoms ..."
  • XIII. Roll call under the moon - "La luna, quasi a mezza notte tarda ..."
  • XIV. The death bill - "midnight"
  • XV. The ballad of the man on the raft - "There was a man walking across the raft ..."
  • XVI. Fugue of the survivors and announcement of salvation - "We have no law ..."
  • XVII. Finale - "Look up!"

layout

In 1985 the musicologist Kurt Pahlen still considered it “completely unthinkable to discuss details of the work”. Henze used "all the tonal means of the 20th century in a concentrated and sophisticated way". Due to the division of the choir into countless polyphonic individual voices, “hearing” intervals is “completely impossible”. The result, however, is a “sound painting of terrifying realism”. Pahlen also recognized “remarkable poetic powers” ​​in the text and scenes “of extraordinary visionary power”.

The subtitle "Oratorie volgare e militare" indicates Henze's motivation to compose for the common people, who in his opinion suffered from reprisals in 1968. The second meaning of the term “militare” as “defensive” is to be interpreted as a subliminal call for resistance.

The appearing characters of death (La Mort) and the speaker refer to ideas of Jean Cocteau , which he developed for Stravinsky's oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927) and the film Orphée (1950). Schnabel used quotations from Dante's Divine Comedy for La Mort's words . The mulatto Jean-Charles appears only marginally in the historical sources. However, he is a central figure in Géricault's painting. The division of the choir into the living and the dead can also be recognized by language. The living sing in German or alternatively in English, the dead in Italian. The movements of both parts of the oratorio (movements II and XII), called “motto”, go back to Blaise Pascal's Pensées . Thus the libretto has several layers, which are formed by the historical report, the verses of Dante, Pascal's world of thought and motifs of the painting.

From the Divine Comedy , Schnabel took "some thirty" lines, which he assigned content and occasionally used several times. These are:

  • IX. Singing with new voices
    • Purgatorio I: 1, 2, 3
    • Inferno IV: 13, 15
    • Purgatorio I: 4th
    • Inferno IV: 16, 17, 15
    • Inferno IV: 64, 65, 66
    • Purgatorio I: 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24
  • X. Instructions for the second day
    • Purgatorio I: 19, 20, 21
  • XIII. Roll call under the moon
    • Purgatorio XVIII: 76, 77, 79
    • Paradiso II: 34, 35, 36
    • Paradiso II: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6
  • XV. The ballad of the man on the raft
    • Purgatorio XXX: 75
    • Paradiso XXV: 34
    • Paradiso XXVIII: 61, 62
    • Purgatorio XXXI: 93
  • XVII. final
    • Paradiso XXXIII: 100, 101, 102

Henze's instrumentation is based on the “style and color” of Géricault's painting. Analogous to the “dark coloring of the picture”, he differentiates particularly in the lower registers, in which he demands alto, tenor and bass forms of the various instrument families. The brass and drums are unusually large. In contrast, no more than the usual number of strings is required. There is no general separation of the first and second violins, but all string parts are divided into individual parts.

The drums have a special meaning in the last 36 bars. Here the timpani joins the ostinate rhythm of the battle cry "Ho - Ho - Ho Chi-minh":

{\ new DrumStaff \ with {drumStyleTable = # percussion-style \ override StaffSymbol.line-count = # 1} \ drummode {\ time 3/2 bd2-> bd bd4 bd bd2 bd-> bd bd4 bd bd2 bd->} }

More percussion instruments come up and the pace accelerates. At the same time, Charon reports on the rescue by the Brigg Argus and ends with the words: "The survivors, however, returned to the world: instructed by reality, feverish to overthrow them." In Henze's revised version from 1990, Charon's words are followed by an instrumental one Hymn of the winds and strings, which superimposes the drum rhythm and replaces the "agitation" with a "glimmer of hope".

Like the strings, the choral parts are often divided. The vocal part of La Mort corresponds stylistically to the parts of other works by Henze. The speaking role of the Charon alternates between free reporting, rhythmic language and precisely notated language in up to seven register positions. The role of Jean-Charles conceived for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau also makes use of spoken chant with an “unstable” pitch, similar to what Arnold Schönberg called for in Pierrot Lunaire , and various unusual singing techniques.

The children's choir of the oratorio is an addition to Henze. There is no evidence in the historical reports that the children mentioned on the embarkation list were accommodated on the raft. In the oratorio, on the other hand, they are among the first victims. Musically this is represented by a simple counting verse repeated several times.

Henze often uses a process that the musicologist Peter Petersen called "false echoes". It already occurs in the counting verses when some of the children present the motif in a distorted form because they are already on the side of the dead. In the duets of the two singers, too, there are several such "combat dialogues with unequal distribution of arms" - unequal because La Mort already knows about the impending death of Jean-Charles when she replies. “Your goal is to prepare him for death and to dissuade him from illusions. That is why their answers are like false echoes that the recipient may perceive subcutaneously. "

The entire work is based on a single twelve-tone row , the eleven transpositions of which Henze arranged in ascending fifths in his row table :

{\ new Staff \ with {\ remove "Bar_engraver" \ remove "Time_signature_engraver"} {bes'1 e '' fis' b 'cis' a' as' g '' c '' d 'es'' f '}}

At the same time, Henze conceived a rhythm series with a total duration of 46 eighth notes, which also includes quarter and eighth rests. The respective eighth notes correspond in the score to the distances between successive notes. The breaks therefore only mark the duration between the assignments and not composed silence. Henze uses this series in different versions, both in the basic form and in the crab form. In terms of numbers, the series corresponds to the following tone durations, with a duration of 1 corresponding to the smallest value in each case:

1–4–4–1–1–4–2–2–1–2–1–1–5–2–1–3–4–5–1–1

Henze also used his typical “tune technique” here - longer tone sequences conceived in advance and sketched in tables, which he processed in different forms, similar to the twelve-tone row. The finale contains such a “tune” made up of 60 tones, in the main part of which there are various instruments. The tune stops here on the third run with the 17th note. The process takes a total of 69 bars at a slow pace.

Henze wrote in his autobiography that his choral composition was based on Johann Sebastian Bach's passions . An obvious quote from Bach can be found in section XVI, the fugue of survivors and the announcement of salvation with the text "We have no law and we die because kingdoms have no conscience". In terms of text distribution, melody and type of sentence, this passage corresponds to the Turba chorus "We have a law, and according to the law he should die" from the St. John Passion . In order to underline the expression of the lament, Henze uses not only the chromatics but also a fourteen-fold subdivision of the choir. Each choir soloist thus corresponds to one of the fourteen living at this point in the plot. The composition is condensed through additional inserts within the voices. There are also calls on the Italian syllable "ahi" and glissando effects .

orchestra

The opera's huge orchestra requires the following instruments:

Work history

Henze's "Oratorio vulgare e militare" The Raft of the Medusa was created in 1967/1968 on behalf of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk Hamburg . In the composer's description, it is about “the sung reading of the log book of a raft that is in disaster on the open sea and loaded with many dying people. The dying are people of the Third World, victims of the heartlessness of egoists from the world of the rich and powerful. ”The aforementioned“ Logbook ”was published in French in 1817 and in English and German the following year - the latter under the title Shipwreck of the Frigate Medusa on her voyage to Senegal in 1816; or a full report of the strange events on the rafts […] by J. B. Heinrich Savigny, former surgeon in the sea service and Alexander Correard, engineer-geographer, both castaways on the rafts. Presenting the rafts with a copper. Leipzig, 1818 With Paul Gotthelf Kummer .

The basic idea and the libretto come from the poet Ernst Schnabel . Henze said it took several years to plan and complete the book. During his preoccupation with the composition, the outside world influenced his work so that he “[felt] closer to them to an increasing extent, and compassion, love and solidarity for the persecuted, for people who suffer, who grew within me lie in fear of death, the minorities, who actually represent a majority, the humiliated and injured ”. The authors saw the work as an allegory, "as a description of a struggle: a struggle for bare life, from which later a fighting spirit and the determination to change unbearable conditions should emerge".

While the oratorio was being completed, the authors learned "that a guerrilla had been killed in Bolivia, killed by a system of rule to which a world with a conscience could not ascribe responsibility" (Ernst Schnabel). Although the plot of their work was only “outwardly and accidentally”, they then dedicated it to “In memoriam Ernesto Guevara ”. When the NDR found out about it, they agreed to print the libretto in the program booklet without the politicizing dedication.

The premiere was to take place on December 9, 1968 on the stage of the Ernst-Merck-Halle (Hall B) in the Planten un Blomen park in Hamburg and be broadcast live on NDR radio. The composer himself was to lead the symphony orchestra of the NDR , the choir of the NDR, the RIAS chamber choir and the Hamburger Knabenkantorei St. Nikolai . The soloists were Edda Moser (soprano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone) and Charles Regnier (speaker). However, because of the red flag placed on the conductor's desk, the dedication to Che Guevara and the SDS leaflets , there were public riots. The premiere had to be canceled before the start. The live broadcast on the radio was ended after twenty minutes and a recording of the dress rehearsal was broadcast. As a result, Henze, who was accused of breach of trust, was largely boycotted for years by German opera houses, broadcasters and concert organizers.

The scandal was not directly related to the work, but was staged from outside. On December 2, 1968 Henze was in a mirror - have been referred to as "Person of the modern music" Article polemical, "the revolution only in the dedication" takes place for the. His “raft drifts, like all Henziads, in the wake of the musical counter-revolution.” This led to debates on topics such as art and the market, aesthetics and the “consciousness industry”. On the evening of the planned premiere, socialist students appeared and protested against the “bourgeois audience” and the “capitalist cultural industry” that prevented true “revolutionary art”. Their protests were expressly not directed against Henze, but against the “ritual” of the concert, which was “celebrated for a bourgeois audience”. Discussions about "new models of music practice" were called for.

According to Henze's own recollections, the protesters first put up a poster of Che Guevara on the concert podium, which was torn up by the broadcaster's program director. Other protesters then put up a red flag instead. Although he was asked by the broadcasting attorney to remove it and the choir refused to sing behind a red flag, Henze refused. There was a riot in the audience. Some angry people entered the podium. Thereupon a hundred police officers, apparently already held ready, marched from the back entrances through the rows of seats into the hall. Henze himself showed solidarity with the students and joined them in the battle cry "Ho - Ho - Ho Chiminh". The situation escalated and a scuffle broke out. Several people were arrested, including the librettist Ernst Schnabel, who was injured and later charged with “resisting state violence” and “attempting to free prisoners”. There was a lengthy legal process in which nothing could ultimately be proven. Schnabel later complained that there was no proper acquittal. The failed premiere is considered one of the "most spectacular scandals in music history".

The concert premiere finally took place on January 29, 1971 in the Wiener Musikverein . There Miltiades Caridis conducted the ORF symphony orchestra and the ORF choir. The soloists were Edda Moser (death), William Pearson (baritone) and Helmut Janatsch (speaker).

The work was staged for the first time on April 15, 1972 at the Städtische Bühnen Nürnberg in a production by Wolfgang Weber . The stage design came from Peter Heyduck, the costumes from Margret Kaulbach. The conductor was Hans Gierster .

There were further performances in 1973 in Copenhagen (direction: Miltiades Caridis), 1974 in Leipzig (direction: Herbert Kegel ), 1975 in Florence (direction: Hans Gierster ), 1977 in the Royal Albert Hall in London (direction: David Atherton ), 1986 in Turin, Vienna and Frankfurt / Main (direction: Caridis), 1991 in the London Barbican Center (direction: Simon Joley), 1993 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residence (direction: Elgar Howarth ), 1994 in the Cologne Philharmonic (direction: Ingo Metzmacher ) , 1996 in the Konzerthaus Berlin (direction: Howarth), 1997 in Birmingham and London (direction: Simon Rattle ), 2001 in the Hamburger Musikhalle (direction: Metzmacher), 2005 in Madrid (direction: Josep Pons ), 2006 in the Berlin Philharmonie ( Direction: Rattle), 2014 in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam (Direction: Markus Stenz ), 2017 in the Wiener Konzerthaus (Direction: Cornelius Meister ), 2017 in the Konzerthaus Freiburg and in the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie (Direction: Péter Eötvös ) and 2018 in De Nationale Opera Amsterdam ( Head: Metzmacher) and in Bochum's Jahrhunderthalle (director: Steven Sloane ).

In 1990 Henze revised the end of the oratorio. In it, he defused the "Ho - Ho - Ho Chi-minh" call from the kettledrum by adding a new instrumental hymn.

An English translation of the libretto is by Desmond Clayton.

Recordings

expenditure

  • Ernst Schnabel: The raft of the Medusa. Text for the oratorio by Hans Werner Henze. On the downfall of a world premiere. Piper, Munich 1969.
  • Hans Werner Henze: The raft of the Medusa: oratorio vulgare e militare in due parti; Text by Ernst Schnabel. Study score, Schott, Mainz 1970.

literature

  • Helmuth Hopf: The "Raft of the Medusa" by Hans Werner Henze: A documentation for the world premiere of the oratorio. In: Journal for Music Education. 35/1986, pp. 44-54.
  • K. Wagner: Downfall on departure: Henze's “Raft of the Medusa” capsizes in Hamburg. In: Melos . 1969, pp. 19-22.
  • Peter Petersen : Hans Werner Henze. A political musician. Twelve lectures. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-88619-368-3 (Chapter V. “The raft of the 'Medusa' - more than a concert scandal”, pp. 101-109).
  • Peter Petersen : The raft of the "Medusa" by Henze and Schnabel. A work of art in the shadow of its reception. In: Ulrich Tadday (Ed.): Hans Werner Henze - Music and Language (= music concepts 132 ). edition text + kritik, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-88377-830-3 , pp. 51–79.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jean Baptiste Henri Savigny: Shipwreck of the frigate Medusa on its voyage to Senegal in 1816. Paul Gotthelf Kummer, Leipzig 1818 ( digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.de%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DXItCAAAAcAAJ~GB%3D~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~doppelseiten%3D~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Benedikt Vennefrohne: Teaching material from the concert didactic cooperation of the SWR with the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport Baden-Württemberg , recommended from grade 10.
  3. ↑ a b Kurt Pahlen : Oratorios of the World. Schweizer Verlagshaus AG, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-7263-6463-3 , p. 175 f.
  4. ↑ a b c Silke Leopold (Ed.): Music theater in the 20th century (= history of the opera. Volume 4). Laaber, 2006, ISBN 3-89007-661-0 , p. 413 f.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j The raft of Medusa. Work information from Schott Music , accessed on December 12, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h Peter Petersen : The raft of the "Medusa" by Henze and Schnabel. A work of art in the shadow of its reception. In: Ulrich Tadday (Ed.): Hans Werner Henze - Music and Language (= music concepts 132 ). edition text + kritik, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-88377-830-3 , pp. 51–79.
  7. ↑ a b Peter Petersen : Hans Werner Henze. A political musician. Twelve lectures. Argument, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-88619-368-3 (Chapter V. “The raft of the 'Medusa' - more than a concert scandal”, pp. 101-109).
  8. ↑ The raft of the Medusa. Work information in the catalog raisonné of the Hans Werner Henze Foundation, accessed on May 10, 2018.
  9. ↑ a b c d Hans-Ulrich Wagner: "The raft of Medusa" - excitement about an oratorio. Article from February 21, 2012 on ndr.de, accessed on May 12, 2018.
  10. ↑ a b c Scandalous piece of the 60s: The raft of the Medusa ( Memento of May 13, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) on the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie website , accessed on May 11, 2018.
  11. ↑ Udo Bermbach (Ed.): Opera in the 20th century. Development tendencies and composers. Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01733-8 , p. 565.
  12. ↑ Childish delight. In: Der Spiegel 49/1968, accessed on May 12, 2018.
  13. ^ NDR kulturradar: Ernst Schnabel on December 9, 1968. Interview on YouTube .
  14. ↑ Jürgen Otten: Into the heart of the darkness. In: Opera world . May 2018, p. 25.
  15. ↑ a b c Hans Werner Henze. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005.
  16. ↑ Hans Werner Henze: The raft of the Medusa. Program from November 26, 2017 on SWR2 , accessed on May 11, 2018.
  17. ^ "The raft of Medusa" by Hans Werner Henze in the Dutch National Opera ( Memento from May 13, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) on Arte Concert . Video no longer available.