Hans Werner Henze, "Whispers From Heavenly Death"

Henze's Vocal Compositions

It is a cause of surprise that Hans Werner Henze, who in his operas and many other compositions has evolved a vocal style which is both extremely singable and offers a wide range of expressive possibilities, wrote his first opera "Das Wundertheater" not for singers but for actors. He may therefore be said to have embarked upon his work in the sphere of dramatic music at point zero. The spoken word, not singing, was his starting point. A certain diffidence vis-à-vis opera determined the nature of his first work of an operatic character.

However, it had been preceded by several vocal compositions: choral pieces on texts by Goethe, Villon and Lope de Vega, and the concert aria "Der Vorwurf", to words by Franz Werfel. Also among this group of early attempts to draw the human voice into a composition, and to assign to it the principal role which it was later to claim with ever increasing insistence, is the Whitman Cantata "Whispers from Heavenly Death" (1948). The brief form of the almost aphoristic poem originally inspired Henze to a composition for piano and voice, and it was only later that he re-wrote it for eight solo instruments and high soprano. For the first time in his career he attempted on that occasion to employ the twelve-tone system, in whose use he had recently been instructed to fashion a vocal line, around which a web of sound is woven by trumpet, celesta, harp, cello and small percussion instruments. The scoring is distantly reminiscent of that which Pierre Boulez was to choose a few years later for his "Marteau sans maître”.

Fifteen years after the Whitman Cantata appeared "Being Beauteous" and the "Cantata della Fiaba Estrema", links in a chain of works which also included the Giordano Bruno Oratorio "Novae de Infinito Laudes", the "Six Absences", the 5th Symphony, the "Choral Fantasia", the "Ariosi", the "Lucy Escott Variations", and "Los Caprichos". They stand between the operas "Elegy for Young Lovers" and "Der junge Lord".

"Being Beauteous", for which Henze had made sketches and studies at Castelgandolfo in 1962, was completed after his return from America. He had gone to New York-for the first time in his life-to be present at the world premiere of his 5th Symphony under Leonard Bernstein. He had left New York quickly, oppressed by the teeming impressions of the city-Harlem by night, and the all-pervading atmosphere with its blend of sweetness and apprehension, decay and danger. He incorporated the essence of this atmosphere into the sketches which he had left behind in Italy, and fashioned them into "Being Beauteous". Only after the composition was clear in his mind's eye did Henze look around for a suitable text, and he recalled to mind Arthur Rimbaud's hallucinatory verses, his ecstatic works shot through with alarming visions. In the "Illuminations", which the poet wrote in 1872/73, he found "Being Beauteous", a "prose poem".

Henze set each of Rimbaud's phrases as an aria in miniature, illustrated by interjections of the four cellos and harp, which constitute the small instrumental ensemble. Despite the intensity of feeling the music has a clear formal shape, which derives from a wide diversity of rhythmical patterns. Strict construction preserves the continuity of the melodic line spun out by the instruments. The voice surrounds this line with arioso lyricism. In the Interlude before the last Aria the muted cellos arrive at the verge of silence. Then, below tranquil harp triplet figures, the voice is heard again-a suggestion of rapture which transcends pain and sings its way to Nirvana.

It is not known where and when Elsa Morante was born. She is at present living in Rome. She has published a number of works, including "Menzogna e Sortilegio" (Falsehood and Sorcery), 1948, "L'Isola di Arturo" (Arthur's Island), 1957, and "Lo Scialle Andaluso" (The Andalusian Shawl), 1964. The poem "Alibi", which Henze has set, is taken from a collection which appeared under the same title in 1959. It seems as though this composition-the "Cantata della Fiaba Estrema"-with its succession of choruses and solo numbers, had the cantatas of Bach as its model. This is especially clear in the Chorale of the "Cantata": on the melody "Mein liebster Jesus, was hast du verbrochen", it introduces the intervals of the theme in all four parts, and varies it.

The "Cantata" is a dream piece, in which the imagination has invented a human being. Henze has attempted to follow the lines of the poem, and to interpret them through his music.-- Klaus Geitel

Cantata on the poem of the same name by Walt Whitman
I.
Darest thou now, o soul
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet
Nor any path to follow?

II.
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding. Nor touch of human hand.
Nor face with blooming flesh,
Nor lips, nor eyes are in that land.

III.
I know it not, o soul.
Nor dost thou. All is a blank before us.
All waits undream'd of
In that region, that inaccessible land.

IV.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense nor any bounds
bounding us.

V.
Then we burst forth,
We float in Time and Space,
0 soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last.
(0 joy! 0 fruit of all!)
Them to fulfill, o soul.