Death in Classical Music
Wed, Nov 30 2011, 10:46AM
Classical Composers are not by and large particularly morbid people, but death and music go so well together, that the combination can be hard to resist. The centuries of this music have supplied a stock of aural gestures to signify life ending: dark, bruised chords, demonic rhythms, violin bows trembling near the bridge, making gnashing screeching sounds etc.
It's not only the doom-laden meditations such as Shostakovich's 15th String Quartet or the sublime expressions of grief such as R. Strauss' Metamorphosen or Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. Or the reference to death as the vital force in romantic Opera, propelling the drama towards its triumphant melodious bloodbath.
It's also the music dealing with the thing itself: that imagines what it is like to die. The wellspring of most death-related music is the Dies Irae chant, a not particularly doom-laden medieval melody to the prayer for departed souls. The chant got its anthemic status during the 19th century, when a great deal of romantic composers slowed it down, cranked it up and had the brass pound it into a terrifying zombie-like march. In Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, the tune is used as the dramatic centerpiece, where Death is a grotesque, a dancing comic character who taunts the living with raucous music.
Liszt, a virtuoso pianist of rock star standing and a composer of mystical bent had his own exquisite fascination with mortality, contributing copiously to the morbid-symphonic repertoire. His masterwork in the genre is Totentanz, a ferociously lugubrious showpiece for piano and orchestra, where he uses the "Dies Irae" in all its pounding majesty, embroidering it with so much hyperactive passagework for the piano, that playing the piece itself can be nearly lethal! Liszt treats mortality by fashioning an ode to death as a heroic stage in life, a titanic struggle for immortality.
The list can go on, showing that composers update the question of Death in Classical Music from the very start (Victoria, Tallis, Schutz), through the centuries (Mozart, Schubert, Berg) up to our times (Shostakovich, Britten, Crumb).
So, what's your views on the matter. Is such an issue a driving force in Classical Music? Is it an inspiration that lies practically everywhere, in almost every composer and most of the works, in one or the other way? Is it, perhaps, the other side of the same coin (life affirmation). Can you provide your examples of great (or bad) music inspired by the subject of mortality or death fear?
Let's illuminate the dark and the unknown.
Parla
Wed, Nov 30 2011, 6:57PM
#2
RE: Death in Classical Music
I have already implied in my last paragraph that "Death" might be the other side of "life affirmation". However, all these magnificent "Requiem", Masses for the Dead, the arguably most important String Quartet "The Death and the Maiden" of Schubert (along with his significant song "Der Erlkoening"), Berg's "Wozzeck", Crumb's "Black Angels" and so many other examples demonstrate that serious composers were dead serious about "Death".
Parla
Wed, Nov 30 2011, 10:34PM
#3
RE: Death in Classical Music
Personally I find the most beautiful mediation on impending death is Strauss' Four Last Songs. The fact that it is about Strauss accepting that his days are numbered makes the regenerative power of the music all the more sublime, reflecting as it does the cyclical nature of life.
For a much colder, objective perspective on death I'd go for Birtwistle's Triumph of Time, inspired by Brueghel's engraving, which sonically presents Time riding on a wagon, relentlessly crushing everything, and Death walking behind in its wake. As ever with Birtwistle you get the horrible inevitability as the wagon crawls forward, but also moments of frailty and lyricism (humanity) from a cor anglais or saxophone.
http://www.art-wallpaper.com/2693/Bruegel+Pieter/The+triumph+of+the+time...
Wed, Nov 30 2011, 10:55PM
#4
RE: Death in Classical Music
I have already implied in my last paragraph that "Death" might be the other side of "life affirmation". However, all these magnificent "Requiem", Masses for the Dead, the arguably most important String Quartet "The Death and the Maiden" of Schubert (along with his significant song "Der Erlkoening"), Berg's "Wozzeck", Crumb's "Black Angels" and so many other examples demonstrate that serious composers were dead serious about "Death".
Parla
Parla
I don't feel totally convinced by your assertion that classical music & composers have any greater affinity for the theme of Death than other art forms. I would say that death is one of those universal themes that mankind has always addressed through creative works; this is essentially how artists (in the broad sense of the word) explore and illuminate universal themes.
That all said, it is interesting to explore two facets of the death/music connection; how death (and mortality) have been portrayed in music and how music has become one of the most common mediums humanity uses to express the complex, personal emotions that surround our experience of death.
It could be argued that the dies irae has become a universal musical meme; given its use in various forms by composers over many centuries it carries both emotional and historical value. I am trying to think of other similar memes but cannot right now - maybe you can?
I wonder why you feel that Wozzeck is about death? Yes it includes both murder and suicide but both Buchner's play and the libretto, for me at least, seem to spend more time exploring morality, power, social class, psychosis etc. Amidst all the outward and inward brutality of the play there is a deep yearning for a better way - while I would not be foolish enough to think Wozzeck a parable, its enduring dramatic power lies in the universality of the message Buchner describes. While we are not all Wozzeck (thank goodness) the drama concentrates and distills elements that are a part of life for many. Wozzeck has always been one of the most powerful operatic works I have ever seen or heard - but I have never mused on death after a performance.
Wed, Nov 30 2011, 11:49PM
#5
RE: Death in Classical Music
I don't feel totally convinced by your assertion that classical music & composers have any greater affinity for the theme of Death than other art forms. I would say that death is one of those universal themes that mankind has always addressed through creative works; this is essentially how artists (in the broad sense of the word) explore and illuminate universal themes.
Without a doubt.
The use of music (or art) for religous purposes of course means that it has a foothold in death for ceremonial reasons. But then birth too. Artists as a whole seems to want to speak out against injustice - so you have the war side of things, there are always a few deaths in that. The Victorians of course celebrated death and loved nothing more than a corpse painting hanging in their lounge. But what touches people more than birth and death! I would think it has to be up there in the top ten of most peoples concerns. But why aren't there more symphonies on job promotion or pension problems or fuel tax or libido problems or chelsea's run of poor form or hair loss (not that I suffer from any of these, of course). Woyzeck is a cracking play, ummm peas.
Thu, Dec 1 2011, 12:25AM
#6
RE: Death in Classical Music
Certainly music for ceremonial effect is frequently linked to religious rituals. Here is a list I found of the st popular classical musci at funerals (courtesy METRO):
1 Nimrod from Enigma Variations - Elgar
2 Pie Jesu from Requiem - Faure
3 Ave Maria - Schubert
4 Nessun Dorma - Puccini
5 Canon in D - Pachelbel
6 Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - Bach
7 Air on a G String - Bach
8 Going Home from the New World Symphony - Dvorak
9 The Four Seasons - Vivaldi
10 Largo from Xerxes - Handel
Interesting that some of these pieces have absolutely nothing to do with death and mourning, yet people feel a connection with them. What is it that connects them?
In former years I used to think Elgar's song 'In Moonlight' was a good choice, but now I wonder whether it would be better if we all chose Cage's 4'33".
Thu, Dec 1 2011, 11:16AM
#7
RE: Death in Classical Music
Naupilus, my assertion on the relationship of Classical music composers and Death lies on the fact that almost none managed to escape from serving, succumbing or honouring the different multifaceted aspects of Death, much more than any other music form (we find very little in pop, almost nothing in Jazz and some in folk). Some of the greatest works of Classical Music have at least connected with the notion of Death. Some spectacular ones:
-Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde (a four or so hours hymn to Love ends up in a divinely sublime music redemption through death).
-The final String Quartet of Beethoven deals with the Question of the Existence of the Unknown. Being in the deathbed, Beethoven put the "difficult question" : "Muss es sein?" (Must it be?) and asserts (just before he dies) : (Es muss sein) It must Be! A plausible reconciliation with death and the divine.
-Bach's Passions: He avoided composing a proper Requiem, but he dealt extensively with the significance of Death in his Trauer Cantatas and the Holy Passion. Even before he dies, he composed this wonderfully poignant song : "Bist du bei mir?" (Are you going to stay beside me?) allegedly addressed to his beloved wife Anna Magdalena.
As for Wozzeck, Berg depicts vividly a simple soldier's descent into the inferno of his own mind, culminating in a murder. Berg evokes violence with lucid precision: a B natural (a single note), disguised by different harmonies and orchestral colours, runs ceaselessly through the scene like a flickering obsession, and once the knife has struck, the entire orchestra masses overwhelmingly on that single note, flooding the scene in lurid sound. Surely, Bernard Herrmann must have had that moment in mind, when he wrote the repeating violin screeches for the shower scene in Psycho!
In my mind, Wozzeck is a very powerful work on the psychotic redemption through death (in this case, a brutal murder) and the inescabable descent into a personal chaotic torture. The possible "yearning for a better life" is simply a part of this inevitable descent, which makes it even more painful.
Parla
Thu, Dec 1 2011, 4:13PM
#8
RE: Death in Classical Music
I think that Bist du bei mir was composed by Stolzel, though for a long time attributed to Bach. That's not to take away from the poignancy of the piece, however.
Fri, Dec 2 2011, 12:15AM
#9
RE: Death in Classical Music
Naupilus, my assertion on the relationship of Classical music composers and Death lies on the fact that almost none managed to escape from serving, succumbing or honouring the different multifaceted aspects of Death, much more than any other music form (we find very little in pop, almost nothing in Jazz and some in folk). Some of the greatest works of Classical Music have at least connected with the notion of Death. Some spectacular ones:
-Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde (a four or so hours hymn to Love ends up in a divinely sublime music redemption through death).
-The final String Quartet of Beethoven deals with the Question of the Existence of the Unknown. Being in the deathbed, Beethoven put the "difficult question" : "Muss es sein?" (Must it be?) and asserts (just before he dies) : (Es muss sein) It must Be! A plausible reconciliation with death and the divine.
-Bach's Passions: He avoided composing a proper Requiem, but he dealt extensively with the significance of Death in his Trauer Cantatas and the Holy Passion. Even before he dies, he composed this wonderfully poignant song : "Bist du bei mir?" (Are you going to stay beside me?) allegedly addressed to his beloved wife Anna Magdalena.
As for Wozzeck, Berg depicts vividly a simple soldier's descent into the inferno of his own mind, culminating in a murder. Berg evokes violence with lucid precision: a B natural (a single note), disguised by different harmonies and orchestral colours, runs ceaselessly through the scene like a flickering obsession, and once the knife has struck, the entire orchestra masses overwhelmingly on that single note, flooding the scene in lurid sound. Surely, Bernard Herrmann must have had that moment in mind, when he wrote the repeating violin screeches for the shower scene in Psycho!
In my mind, Wozzeck is a very powerful work on the psychotic redemption through death (in this case, a brutal murder) and the inescabable descent into a personal chaotic torture. The possible "yearning for a better life" is simply a part of this inevitable descent, which makes it even more painful.
Parla
Parla
You may be right about classical music 'honouring the multifacted aspects of Death' better than other types of music, but to be honest that issue does not interest me greatly.
As for your point about some of the greatest pieces of music 'connected with death' I would not refute that claim regarding all the piece you mention, bar Wozzeck. Given the themes of Tristan and the Bach Passions it seems such a connection is unavoidable, as the stories they tell deal directly with death. The Passions, and in a sense all requiems, cannot avoid this if they are to be true to their purpose, although I would argue that the Passions are not about death so much as about death and ressurection in the context of a redeeming narrative. But as an atheist I clearly understand that my concept of these works is based on different parameters from those of faith.
I am not sure how Marie's murder is redeeming to the mind of Wozzeck, if I understand your view correctly. The key point surely is that the ending is neither the murder or the suicide, but instead a child at play. Each of us will have his own understanding and mine is that Buchner/Berg felt the need to remind us that Wozzeck's descent was not inevitable.
What seems to link most purely musical representations of death (and I don't there are many) is the issue of transfiguration. Perhaps music in all forms is so tied to the metaphysical/spiritual that music cannot actually only imitate the act of dying as its power will always lead to a sense of transfiguration. I say this realising that the notion sounds quite ridiculous but when I think about (for me) the greatest symphonic representation of death it is Mahler's Ninth. In this I am applying a program to pure music, which is inevitably subjective. But even in this piece, the nature of silence that follows is an act of transfiguration as music has passed to the other side. There are no pieces of art without catharsis, and if one has ever watched anybody die in reality then you understand that there is no catharsis in the actual act of dying, just infinite silence. That is something no composer can imitate.
Thu, Dec 15 2011, 10:13AM
#10
Death in Classical Music
Amazing ideas folks.:) I guess there is really something between death and priceless music made by amazing people. In my opinion it happens in unexplainable manner, death is like a cycle as well as music. Music lives as long as people continue to love them. Death is inevitable while music became immortal when people let it live in their hearts.:) http://www.appisaurus.com/
Thu, Dec 15 2011, 11:24AM
#11
RE: Death in Classical Music
Very poetically correct, Naomi!
Do you have any works in mind that fit in this lyrical approach of yours that you would like to share with us?
Parla
Thu, Dec 15 2011, 5:19PM
#12
RE: Death in Classical Music
parla,
It's clear that some of the pieces listed above as examples that the association with death has been added by their use on ceremonial occasions. Nimrod is an obvious example - orginally Elgar set a faster metronome mark, subsequently changed and as we know was inspired by the slow movement of Beethoven string quartets - and the one title LvB gave in fact commemorates the return to health (A Minor Quartet). The link between the Mahler Adagietto and 'Death in Venice' dates from the film, and indeed as Norman Lebrecht has pointed out, it represents Alma.
So unless they have specific motif such as the Dies Irae (Berlioz, Rachmaninov etc) or has death in its title it's really difficult to assert that abstract music is about 'death' per se - it could be about depression, resignation... No - you need a sung text, be it Brunnhilde's immolation, the Kindertotenlieder, the central movement of the Gurrelieder, or more recently the last of Lieberson's Neruda songs written for his wife.
Thu, Dec 15 2011, 10:14PM
#13
RE: Death in Classical Music
I agree, grosso modo, with you, Micos69. By all means, "abstract" music is subject to various interpretations of the receptive listener. However, there is a trace, quite often (sometimes, with some indications from the composer himself), showing the several aspects and different stages of death, like depression, resignation, gloom, grief, etc in the process of composition.
In op. 132, Beethoven was faced with probable death (actually his new "lease of life" lasted only two more difficult years). So, in the final outcome of the central slow and pivotal movement, he celebrates the "return to health", with the second sublime theme in D major. However, before that point of exaltation, he portrays the immediate menace of death with a very strict, ominous and powerful chorale in F. The critical and most interesting thing is the resolution of the movement, where the chorale becomes more assertive and intense, transcending the death notion and resorting to life celebration, maybe as death is the other side of the same coin (life-death).
On the other hand, in music works with written texts expressing directly death (Requiem, Passions, Stabat Mater, etc.), sometimes the music, in the course of the work, may become assertive, even life affirming (Sanctus) or even lighthearted (Rossini's Stabat Mater).
So, what I try to imply is that, regardless of the outcome, the inspiration, in the process of the composition, might be, often enough, death in its different phases and various forms.
Parla
parla, Shall we say that classical music's concern with death is the other side of the coin to its celebration of life - the Delius 'Mass of Life', the start of the 'Rite of Spring', the various motifs in the 'Ring', Haydn's 'Creation' where chaos gives way to light, the return to health in Beethoven's A Minor quartet.... I don't see anything uniquely dark in CM as such: it merely reflects human life and its expectations and fears. On balance it is optimistic, as expressed in the vast preponderance of Western music written in the major key.