L’Enfance du Christ – Trilogie sacrée op. 25
Ed Lyon, Tenor · David Wilson-Johnson, bass
Mireille Delunsch, Sopran · Masahi Tsuji, tenor
William Dazeley, bass
Salzburger Bachchor
Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg
Ivor Bolton, conductor
The oratorio, which uses scenes from Jesus’ childhood
as its inspiration, was not composed at a stroke. A sequence
of associations and successful performances
of already finished parts of the work guided Berlioz
to the complete three-part oratorio. Since then, the
musical programme at Christmas time has been enriched
with a great work of the 19th century thanks
to L’Enfance du Christ. Berlioz shows a seldom seen
side of his composer’s personality here – with unusual
mildness and appropriately simple, almost naïve musical
structure he gets closer to his purpose.
A special kind of
Christmas Oratorio
1. Between ‘heilsgeschichte’ and free narrative:
Jesus Christ as the subject of art in
sacred music.
In the beginning was The Passion. This is
the briefest explanation for how the Son
of God came to such prominence in western
art music. Christ’s suffering on the cross
has always held a special place in the gospel
texts. The tradition of telling the Passion
story in several voices goes back to the 13th
century. The role of the Evangelist was given
to the deacon; Christ’s words were presented
in a lower voice by another member of the
clergy while yet another clergyman represented
other figures in the story. Later, a choir
would take the part of various collectives
like the high priests, soldiers and the crowd.
This art form reached one of its early high
points in the 17th century with the works of
Heinrich Schütz. The summit of this genre,
however, is represented by Johann Sebastian
Bach’s St. John Passion (1723) and St. Matthew
Passion (1729). But the long shadow cast by
these outstanding compositions tended to
inhibit creative work with this subject in the
19th century. In more recent times, however,
composers like Hugo Distler (Choralpassion,
1932), Ernst Pepping (Passionsbericht nach
Matthäus, 1950) and Krzysztof Penderecki
(Lukas-Passion, 1966) have successfully rededicated
themselves to the genre in various
manners and with varying degrees of subjectivity.
A particular species of the Passion
thematic was presented by Joseph Haydn
with his composition The Seven Last Words
of Christ on the Cross, which he published in
arrangements for various ensembles.
Another aspect of Jesus’ earthly life, the
Sermon on the Mount, inspired César Franck
to write his oratorio Les Béatitudes. The composer
considered this work, which took him
ten years to compose, to be his most important.
There is also no dearth of pieces that
showcase the entire life and words of the Redeemer.
Almost all of these end with death
and resurrection or with a reflection and the
concluding joyful confession of faith. Georg
Friedrich Handel’s Messiah (1741) belongs
to this latter category; Franz Liszt’s Christus
(1867) to the first. If Holy Week and Easter
are the most important events in the liturgical
calendar of the church, Christmas, with
the birth of Christ is more a festival for the
heart. Its purpose is to foster a close relationship
between biblical history and personal
experience by incorporating the Baby Jesus
into the family celebration. Over the centuries,
composers considered telling the Christmas
story in music to be a highly worthwhile
artistic challenge. J.S. Bach’s so-called Christmas
Oratorio (1734) is actually constructed of
six cantatas for the religious festivals between
Christmas Eve and Epiphany. The little
known composition The Childhood of Christ
by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, however,
goes back to a poem by Johann Gottfried
Herder. This piece and its title may possibly
have inspired Hector Berlioz to set his
sacred trilogy L’Enfance du Christ to words
and music.
2. Stations of a creative process
The Mémoires of Hector Berlioz, printed
in 1865 but only posthumously released in
their entirety in 1870, are much more than
cheap anecdotes of the composer’s life. This
thoughtful and stylistically noteworthy book
holds a place of honor within French prose
writings. It is just as original and effective as
the artist’s compositions. The text also provides
valuable information on the origins of
the L’Enfance. The first piece in the work that
Berlioz wrote was the short chorus “The farewell
of the shepherd”. Berlioz remarks about
the almost coincidental creation of the piece
during a social invitation: “I was rather bored
when Duc (NB: the host, an architect) turned
to me and said, ‘Because you’re not doing anything,
you should write a little music piece for
my album.’ ‘Gladly,’ I reply. I then take a scrap
of paper, write some music lines on it and soon
compose a four-voice Andantino for organ. I
believe I find a certain expressiveness of bucolic,
naïve mysticism in the piece, and immediately
think about setting a text in the same style to the
music. The organ piece disappears and becomes
a choir by the shepherds in Bethlehem who are
singing farewell to the Baby Jesus as the Holy
Family leaves for Egypt.” The other guests
interrupt their card games with amazement
and delight and eavesdrop on the “medieval
quality of my verse and my music.”
The developments now take a curious
course, however. Berlioz performs the chorus
as a supposed composition of a made-up
composer: Pierre Lucré, ostensibly from the
18th century. Reviewers are full of praise for
the charming sound of this ‘ghost writer’
– especially in comparison to the bizarre
mannerisms of his discoverer, who becomes
increasingly pleased with this mystification.
Berlioz adds further vocal numbers (The
Calm of the Holy Family) as well as an overture
and then successfully performs the three
pieces under the title The Flight to Egypt –
now under his own name.
The “result of a small farce that I played on
our good policemen, the French music critics”
had slowly become a true creative matter
for Berlioz. He thus wrote a continuation of
the minor sacred work (The Arrival in Sais)
and then finally added an extensive musical
introduction: Herod’s Dream. Premiered in
December 1854 in its entirety, the oratorio
captured the hearts of audiences and critics
alike, not only due to false pretenses. Many
thought – or hoped – that Berlioz was finally
developing an agreeable and pleasant musical
language. But the composer strongly contradicts
this assumption in his autobiography.
“Nothing is less well-founded than this view.
The subject is naturally simple and gentle, and
must thus be expressed with music that corresponds
to it in taste and intelligence. … I would
have written ‘L’Enfance’ the same way twenty
years ago.” From the same source (quoted in
W. Dömling, “Berlioz”, 1977), we read that
the musician adapted his style both to the
respective characters of the figures and the
given situations. “Herod’s insomnia aria in G
Minor” is written with “dark harmonies and
cadences of an odd character.” The overture,
on the other hand, is written “in an innocent
style, in F-sharp Minor without a leading tone”,
which gives the piece a “melancholy, somewhat
simple mood reminiscent of old traditional laments.”
Only a later generation of listeners
would be able to recognize the subtle purpose
of the composer – behind the seemingly
smooth façade. Likewise, it took long before
the qualities of the previously composed (and
unanimously rejected) ‘concertante opera’ or
‘dramatic legend’ La Damnation de Faust
were recognized and the work given the appreciation
it deserved.
3. Structure and content
At the beginning of the part one, a narrator
introduces the time and milieu of the story.
This is followed by a “nocturnal march”
and a dialog between two Romans discussing
Herod’s disturbed mental state, before
Herod himself reveals his diffuse fears and
conflicted psyche. The chorus of fortunetellers
intensifies and concretizes the ruler’s panic:
a new-born child whose name is known
by none will dethrone Herod and become
his heir. The spirits thus advise Herod to
his infamous campaign of killing newborn
boys. The scene now changes: we are in the
stall in Bethlehem. Maria and Joseph sing a
duet glorifying their small baby. A choir of
invisible angels warns the parents about the
impending danger and tells them to flee immediately
for Egypt.
In part two, a pastoral overture sets the
mood for the following farewell chorus of
the shepherds. The narrator then reports
about the travels of the Holy Family before
an exultant choir of angels closes this “middle
act”.
The concluding third part, The Arrival in
Sais, is exciting and full of detail. Exhausted
and abused by the population, the fugitives
don’t find a friendly welcome until they reach
an Ismaelite household. A trio for two flutes
and harp cheers the guests. Their cares and
weariness disappear in the agreeable security
of the new domicile and its amiable inhabitants.
A choir invites the Holy Family to be at
peace again and conveys new hope.
The epilog, again introduced by the narrator,
closes the work with the meditative
passage “My heart, be fulfilled with pure,
deep love that alone can open the doors to
the heavenly kingdom. Amen.”
Getting to know this spiritual trilogy expands,
enriches and deepens our image of
Berlioz, who was much more than the artistic
iconoclast that his French contemporaries
wanted to pigeonhole him as and reduce him
to.
Oswald Panagl
Translation: Elizabeth Gahbler