Sunday, May 15, 2016
King David is after all not completely gone
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – PETER PEARS –
THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE – 1966
Apart from the
opening and closing hymn in Latin that is from the old church tradition going back
to the Middle Ages in the English tradition, so less Gregorian than it could
have been, but quite distinctive, the whole opera is in English and on a score
by Benjamin Britten of course. The influence in the form from the Japanese Noh
theatre might be true in the all male cast and the economy of the story and
architecture of the opera, but I find another influence, or maybe chance
meeting, in this music. Benjamin Britten avoids all types of harmonious music
or singing and goes, along with the libretto that is impressionistic poetry
more than a real dramatic story in some fully developed prose, to a music that can
be thought as being part of the reading of the Old testament in the Hebraic
tradition, a reading and singing that went back to the first Israeli music
school founded by King David himself. Two styles have been identified from the
diacritic signs and symbols in the margins of the Hebrew Old Testament: a
prosody which is a way to chant rather than plain read the prose parts of the
text and a psalmody which is some ritual way to “sing” the sections of the text
that are psalms hence poetic in form and inspiration.
This opera
thus has a music that is restrained in effects, and tamed in power. It is more
an atmosphere, a rather slow rhythm accompanying the story and emphasizing the
important moments. There actually is some spoken sentences, but there are also
many passages that are more incantations than arias or whatever. The angel for
example is reduced to a long “o” dirge or whine behind the chorus or the
singers. The only moments when the music has some exuberance, generally heavier
than the rest, is when the Emperor of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar speaks or leads
some celebration like a banquet or feast with wine or the celebration of the
golden god Merodak.
The rest of
the time we are in the tradition of Jewish or Hebraic dirges and invocations or
recitations in the tradition of the one that is best known to the general
public, the Kaddish song for the dead. And we can even think of Maurice Ravel’s
rendering of this Kaddish that is a slightly embellished version, of the
traditional Jewish version. (Check for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3USptpfcZc
Kaddisch - Maurice
Ravel(1875-1937). Cantor Azi Schwartz. Piano -- Fadi Deeb, Recorded live at the
Jerusalem Music Center
The story is well
known of course. Nebuchadnezzar invites three Israelis, sons of princes in Israel
The point in this Old
Testament story is that the three young Israelis do not respect the traditions
of the Babylonian empire. They do not take part in the banquet ordered to honor
them: they do not eat and they do not drink, and we know why. Then when
Nebuchadnezzar instates a new god of gold, Merodak, they refuse to honor it –
since it is nothing but an idol – with any veneration or whatever is supposed
to be offered to a god of gold. That is in full contradiction with Babylonian
traditions and it does not respect the authority of the emperor who must be
obeyed no matter what he may ask. They are thrown, into a furnace but an angel
joins them and they come out of the furnace unscathed, which makes
Nebuchadnezzar proclaim the god of the Jews has to be accepted and he converts
to Judaism.
What is interesting
here is how three foreigners are estranged from their culture by being imposed
Babylonian names in the stead and place of there Israeli names, and then they
are required to respect local traditions, which they don’t do so they are seen
as being hostile and after having been
integrated in the local society they are rejected anew as impious foreigners
and sentenced to die. But the angel is an intruder in the game and he saves the
three young men which makes the local emperor proclaim his conversion to the
foreign religion of the foreigners he had previously sentenced to die. That
constant game on who is the stranger, the foreigner to whom must have been
fascinating to Benjamin Britten since it is a very common theme. What’s more three
young men are sentenced to death. The death of young teenagers or young men is
also very common with Benjamin Britten as if young men were cursed in our
society and world, cursed to accept the rules of the society, though they may
be different and would like to live their lives the way they decide. But that
freedom for young men in our society is not an option.
As for the music it
is very light because very few instruments and performers. The instruments,
winds and strings, are used to their utmost possibilities which means often
contrasted one against the others and more to punctuate the text, to create an
atmosphere than to swallow up the whole action or singing. The singing and the
text is primordial and the music only an accompaniment. The percussion here
again give the rhythm of the story, a rhythm that is often slow even
contemplative or some kind of meditation inside our mind, certainly a
reverberation in our brains, ears and even eyes because that music is highly
suggestive of the scene we cannot see except in some retrospective vision on
our retinas. We must also note that the Abbot of the beginning becomes the
Astrologer of the opera and then goes back to his Abbot identity to tell us the
basic meaning at the end because the text from the Bible, Old or New Testaments
alike, cannot be understood without the interceding discourse of a
representative of God on earth. That is very typical of the Christian Middle
Ages, and still is true in all Christian traditions with the reading from the
Book and then the sermon of the preacher to expand the reading and show the
real meaning… at least the meaning of the text on that particular day.
In other words this
small opera would be great in an old Norman church in England or an old Romanesque church in
Livradois-Forez in Auvergne
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:08 PM 
