The love supper of the apostles

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The Love Supper of the Apostles is a work for male choir and orchestra by Richard Wagner that is comparable to the cantata form . It is based on a biblical scene from the Acts of the Apostles and is the only sacred work of Wagner's few choral works .

Origin and reception

Wagner's move from Paris to Dresden in 1842 preceded the composition of the work . On February 2, 1843, Wagner became royal Saxon court conductor and agreed to take over the position of chief conductor of the Dresden Liedertafel at the big song festival planned for July in Dresden . Wagner was commissioned with the composition of a new, almost half-hour work, which was to be performed by all Saxon male choirs at the singing festival. As a result, Wagner interrupted his work on the opera Tannhäuser and wrote a text based on a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, in which the Whitsun events about the apparition of the Holy Spiritbe retold. In the spring the setting to music followed; As a cast, Wagner put three male choirs (each T T B B), twelve apostles (12B), a sky choir ( 16T, 12 bar , 12B) as well as a large orchestra with quadruple wood , a large sheet metal contingent including serpent , large string ensemble, four timpani and two harps firmly. On July 6, 1843, the work was premiered in the Frauenkirche in Dresden with the participation of 1200 singers and 100 orchestra members.

The work was enthusiastically received by the public and subsequently published several times by the Breitkopf & Härtel and Novello publishers. While the piece remained in the repertoire of many German men's choirs until the turn of the century, Wagner himself was not particularly pleased with the premiere of the work, later spoke only disdainfully about the work and did not perform it himself again. He was able to break away from the Dresden Liedertafel by passing the direction on to his friend Ferdinand Hiller .

The delayed use of the orchestra should be mentioned as a remarkable effect. The choirs sing a cappella for the first 25 minutes or so until the orchestra begins at the appearance of the Holy Spirit. The mysterious effect of multiple distributed and in the height of the church on various galleries up into the dome partially invisible posted choirs tried Wagner later in Parsifal to achieve again.

The work is Charlotte Emilie Weinlig born. Dedicated to Treitschke (1787–1873), widow of Christian Theodor Weinlig .

Discography

selection

literature

  • Wolf-Daniel Hartwich: Richard Wagner's liturgy of the future. Jewish-Christian art religion in the 19th century . In: Richard Faber (Ed.): Secularization and Resacralization. On the history of the hymn and its reception . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2033-2 , pp. 79-98. ( googlebooks )

Web links