Nanny

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Nänie ( Latin nenia or naenia ) is the name of a funeral chant that accompanied funeral procession in ancient Rome . Since these chants were not set down in writing, little is known about their origin and form. It is likely that they comprised traditional texts and melodies and were accompanied by flute or lute . The Nänie is mentioned among others in Suetonius and Seneca the Younger . In Horace and Ovid , "Nänie" also appears in the meaning of a children's song or magic song. Sometimes the term is also used synonymously with Threnos , the ancient Greek name for various types of lamentations.

Following the ancient term, the Nänie was adopted in the Renaissance and early modern times by humanistic poets such as Michael Marullus and cultivated as a literary genre . Including used Erasmus of Rotterdam the term end of the 15th century in his obituary of Johannes Ockeghem , that of Johannes Lupi was set to music.

Today's best-known literary work with the title Nänie comes from Friedrich Schiller , who used the term as the title of a poem published in 1800 (“Even the beautiful must die!”), Both in terms of content through numerous examples from Greek mythology and in the chosen Verse form of the distich refers to Greek antiquity. Johannes Brahms set this poem to music in 1880/81 in memory of the painter Anselm Feuerbach for choir and orchestra (op. 82). Carl Orff's version was published in Bremen in 1956 and was later included as the second movement in the Dithyrambi cycle , which premiered on November 22, 1987 with the Bavarian Radio Chorus in Munich.

Schiller's niece

Emergence

Thetis weeps for the dead Achilles , Johann Heinrich Füssli , 1780

Schiller's Nänie first appeared in 1800 in the volume Gedichte von Friedrich Schiller, First Part, and was probably written in 1799, shortly before it went to press. So it comes from the Weimar Classic period , whose literature dealt with Greek epics and myths, followed the ideals of ancient aesthetics and adopted forms of ancient poetry.

Goethe's poem Euphrosyne , which shows parallels in content and form to Nänie and appeared in Schiller's Muses-Almanach for the year 1799 , as well as Goethe's Achilles and Schiller's examination of the "death of the beautiful" as part of his work on Wallenstein's death are considered to be Schiller 's direct influences . The art-philosophical content of the poem testifies to the poet's preoccupation with Karl Philipp Moritz ' On the visual imitation of the beautiful (1788).

Full text

Nanny

Even the beautiful must die! That conquers men and gods,
    It does not touch the brazen breast of the Stygian Zeus.
Only once did love soften the shadow ruler,
    And on the threshold still, sternly, he called back his gift.
Aphrodite does not still the beautiful boy the wound,
    which the boar cruelly carved into the delicate body.
The immortal mother
    does not save the divine hero when he, falling at the Scaean gate, fulfills his fate.
But she rises out of the sea with all the daughters of Nereus,
    And the lament begins for the glorified son.
Please refer! Then the gods weep, the goddesses all weep,
    That the beautiful perishes, that the perfect dies.
To be a lament in the mouth of the beloved is also glorious;
    Because the mean goes down to the Orcus without a sound.

interpretation

Content-related statements

The subject of the lament in Schiller's Nänie is not the death of a concrete person, but of an abstraction, of the “beautiful” in itself. This becomes clear on the one hand in the consistently abstract terms ("the beautiful", "the perfect"), on the other hand in the fact that Schiller illustrates the initial thesis "Even the beautiful must die!" With three examples from Greek mythology, but does not mention the names of the deceased and thus lets their individual fate take a back seat. Also Hades , the god of the underworld, is not mentioned by name, but rather as "Stygian Zeus" (from Styx , the river of the underworld, and Zeus , the most powerful god of the ancient Greeks). The poem assumes that the reader is familiar with the myths to which the distiches two to four allude: the attempt of the singer Orpheus to save his bride Eurydice from the underworld, the mourning of the goddess Aphrodite for her lover Adonis and the inability of the sea nymph Thetis to save her son Achilles from death.

The fifth double verse heralds a new train of thought with the introductory word "But": It reports on the lamentation of the Thetis for their fallen son, who, according to the Odyssey, was joined by all the Nereids and Muses and who moved people and gods to tears for 17 days ( sixth distich). In the last double verse, Schiller concludes that it is also “wonderful” to be performed as a lament “in the mouth of the beloved”. The beautiful thus has the opportunity to continue to live in art after its earthly end. Like the first, plaintive distich, this comforting knowledge is introduced with the word “also” and thus directly opposed to it. The Nänie can therefore be understood both as a lamentation and as a reflection on it. This dichotomy is typical of Schiller's poetry: "Sensation is never released from the grip of the reflective mind." (Ernst Osterkamp)

Formal aspects

Schiller chose the distich as the verse form of the Nänie , in which each double verse is composed of a hexameter and a pentameter . In antiquity this form was used on the one hand in the plaintive elegy , on the other hand in the epigram , which expresses a train of thought in a pointed form, often in a single distich. The Nänie cannot be clearly assigned to one of these types of poem, since it encompasses both aspects of a lamentation and those of intellectual reflection. This special position is also expressed in the arrangement of the poem within the posthumous, but still prepared by Schiller himself, superb edition of his poems: within the third book, which contains the elegies and epigrams, it is in the penultimate position, following a series of Epigrams, which are headed with votive tablets , and followed by the poem The Destruction of Troy , which is the only one in the volume not written in distiches.

reception

When it was first published, the poem was the fourth from last in an anthology and, as one of many, initially met with little response. There is also no indication that it would have had an excellent position for Schiller himself. Neither of him nor of his circle of acquaintances is known of a statement about the Nänie . Today, on the other hand, the work is one of Schiller's most popular poems; it is represented in numerous collections of poetry and is a regular subject of school lessons.

Schiller's Nänie inspired two Romantic composers to create choral works: the better-known version comes from Johannes Brahms (op.82 from 1881), but the German composer Hermann Goetz had already used the poem as a template for his op.10 in 1874.

Brahms' niece

Emergence

Brahms began work on the setting of Schiller's Nänie in spring 1880 in response to the death of a friend, the painter Anselm Feuerbach . With the selection of a text template that relates to Greek antiquity in terms of title, motifs and form, Brahms referred to the ancient subjects that Feuerbach preferred. After a break in work, he finished the work in the summer of 1881 and dedicated it to Henriette Feuerbach , the painter's stepmother. The Nänie was thus a good ten years after Brahms' best-known choral work, the German Requiem op.45, which in a comparable way creates a musical balance between the mourning for a deceased and the consolation of the bereaved.

Musical implementation of the text template

The mood of Brahms' composition is generally described as gentle, undramatic and forgiving. It is characteristic of the atmosphere of the work that it is written entirely in major keys as a lament .

Brahms formally divides the text into three parts that correspond to the content of the poem: The orchestral introduction, which lasts 24 bars, is pervaded by motifs of sighs and already introduces the theme of the first part in the oboe. Form part A, in andante , D major and 6/4 time, then sets the first four distiches to music, which lament the death of the beautiful and illustrate them with three mythological examples. The soprano begins with the statement "Even beautiful things must die", the other voices gradually join in like a fugue . The crescendo culminates in the homophonic complaint that beauty alone cannot move Hades , the ruler of the underworld. After a brief caesura, the bass begins the text of the second distich in bar 47 with a variation of the fugue theme. In the memory of Orpheus ' failure, this passage also ends in a homophony that pervades the entire work when it comes to vividly describing the inevitability of death. The third double verse recalls how Aphrodite rushes to the aid of Adonis, who was wounded on the hunt . Musically, this is expressed in the fact that the male voices begin in bar 65, and alto and soprano begin two bars later in the canon . The description of the boar that Adonis inflicted the fatal wound is emphasized by Brahms with a powerful hemiole that concludes each of the first four distiches. With the death of Achilles , the choir is in forte throughout and accompanied by moving string figures, the most dramatic passage of the work, which reaches its dynamic climax from bar 81 with the words “his fate fulfilled”.

Part B from bar 85 is based on the fifth and sixth distiches, which tell of Thetis ' lament and its effect on people and gods. This turning point in terms of content finds its counterpart in music through a change to F sharp major; in addition, this part is in 4/4 time and a sustained tempo (più sostenuto) . Brahms reproduces the rising of the nymph out of the sea by a line rising in unison , and the strings played pizzicato can also be seen as a tone painting of the water. As a result of the structure, a different amount of text is omitted on the musical form parts, so that text repetitions become more frequent towards the end. Brahms uses this situation to give greater emphasis to the lament of “all gods” by setting the sixth distich to music twice. The crying, especially of the goddesses, is designed chromatically . The first execution from bar 97 begins piano and increases to the forte lamentation that “the perfect is dying”. The second setting from bar 119 follows this in forte, but ends in the dynamic low point of the work, an almost a cappella pianissimo passage of the choir from bar 137.

A comparison of the soprano in bars 25 and 149 shows how the opening theme is taken up again in form A '.

In bars 141–181, part G returns to the tempo, measure and key of the A part and, after an eight-bar instrumental transition, also takes up its theme in order to set the final distich “Also a lament to be…” to music (see music example ). This arch shape emphasizes the juxtaposition of the lament at the beginning with the comforting thought at the end of the poem, which Schiller already created. Brahms dedicates only a few bars to the last verse (“the common goes down to the Orkus without a sound”), in which he once again, this time in piano, as in Part A, reminds of death with a homophonic hemiole. Then he emphasizes the positive aspect of the final thought by taking up the penultimate verse again from bar 162 ("To be a lament too ... ... is wonderful") and finally insists several times on the word "wonderful".

Influence of the setting by Goetz

Six years before Brahms began work on his Nänie , the German composer Hermann Goetz had set the same text to music. His movement was performed in February 1880, shortly after Feuerbach's death, in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna . Even if it is not known whether Brahms attended the performance and whether he did not have the sheet music for Goetz 'setting, it is likely that he knew the earlier work, which is also called "Nenie".

The implementations of the two composers differ in essential points, however: The version by Goetz is more dramatic and places mourning and lament more in the foreground than that of Brahms. Goetz also assigns parts of the choir , similar to an oratorio , the roles of those acting in the poem. In his work, for example, the tenor embodies Orpheus, while the soprano and alto represent the daughters of Nereus. Brahms renounces this and instead places greater emphasis on the ideas of the poem. Through the musical arch form, he emphasizes the content-related comparison of the first with the last distich, while Goetz composes his setting in a straight line. A remarkable parallel, however, is that both composers let their works end with the penultimate verse of the poem and a repetition of the word “wonderful”.

reception

The world premiere of Brahms' Nänie took place on December 6, 1881 in Zurich . In the same month the work also appeared in print. The concert left a deep impression on the audience and was also a financial success, so that the Tonhalle Board of Directors had a silver trophy made in recognition of Brahms. Further performances followed quickly, including in Vienna in 1882. Today the approx. 15-minute work based on the German Requiem op.45 and in a series with the Rhapsody for alto solo, male choir and orchestra op.53, the Schicksalslied op.54 and the song of the Parzen op.89 is one of the well-known choral works by Brahms.

literature

  • KF Hilliard: “Nänie”: Critical Reflections on the Sentimental in Poetry. In: Publications of the English Goethe Society 75 (1): 3-13, 2006. (Online as .pdf, 76 kB)
  • Florence May: Johannes Brahms. The story of his life. Translated from the English by Ludmille Kirschbaum. Matthes & Seitz 1983. For Nänie see in particular pages 210 below.
  • Ernst Osterkamp : The beautiful in Mnemosynes lap. In: Norbert Oellers (Ed.): Interpretations. Poems by Friedrich Schiller. Reclam, Stuttgart 1996, pp. 282-297, ISBN 3-15-009473-9 .
  • Christian Martin Schmidt : Reclam's music guide Johannes Brahms. Reclam, Stuttgart 1994. pp. 209-210, ISBN 3-15-010401-7 .
  • Matthias Walz: Nänie op. 82. In: Hans Gebhard (Hrsg.): Harenbergs Chormusikführer - From the Chamber Choir to the Oratorio. Harenberg, 1999, pp. 139-140, ISBN 3-611-00817-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry Nänie in Das neue Lexikon der Musik. Metzler, 1996
  2. ↑ Friedrich Schiller: Complete Works. Volume 1: poems, dramas I . Albert Meier (Ed.), Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag , 2004. ISBN 3-423-59068-8
  3. ↑ Quoted from Friedrich Schiller: Complete Works. After the last edition with reference to the first editions and the manuscripts . Volume 3: Poems, Stories, Translations . Zurich / Düsseldorf: Artemis and Winkler 1996.
  4. ↑ Ernst Osterkamp: The beautiful in Mnemosynes lap. In: Norbert Oellers (Ed.): Interpretations. Poems by Friedrich Schiller. Reclam, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-15-009473-9 , p. 287.
  5. ↑ Matthias Walz: Nänie op. 82. In: Hans Gebhard (Ed.): Harenbergs Chormusikführer - From the Chamber Choir to the Oratorio. Harenberg, 1999, pp. 139-140, ISBN 3-611-00817-6 , p. 140.
  6. ↑ Florence May: Johannes Brahms. The story of his life. Translated from the English by Ludmille Kirschbaum. Matthes & Seitz 1983, p. 211.
  7. ^ François Dupray: Le fruit d'une longue gestation. In: Supplement to the CD Brahms Symphony No. 1 / Nänie. Boston Symphony Orchestra , Bernard Haitink , Tanglewood Festival Chorus (performer), Philips Digital Classics 1996.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on April 24, 2007 .