Gott ist nicht tot. The sacred in post WW2 music.

[Mandryka]

I'm quite surprised to notice that there is a "loud and proud" sacred current in modern art music, I think more so than in drama, plastic arts and literature -- please correct me if that is wrong.

Anyway, here's a thread to collect them, note them, comment on them.

[Mandryka]

I'll kick it off with something I've only just discovered -- through a comment I read by composer Dominique Lemaître. Pierre Henry's  L'Apocalypse de Jean

A commission by André  Malraux 's ministry of culture, and created in October 1968 in Paris, surprising in a way given the zeitgeist

[AnotherSpin]

An interesting topic. For some reason, I immediately thought of Éliane Radigue or Toshiro Mayuzumi. Or are we limiting ourselves only to the Western framework? If so, then we'll quickly run into the numerous requiems, psalms, and so on by postwar composers, who were not necessarily expressing genuine spiritual interest, but rather just using the form.

[Mandryka]

If so, then we'll quickly run into the numerous requiems, psalms, and so on by postwar composers, who were not necessarily expressing genuine spiritual interest, but rather just using the form.

I think things like Stockhausen's Teenagers' Song and Ligeti's requiem count, I don't think it's a good idea to speculate about composers' real intentions, and they were setting a sacred text after all.

[Mandryka]

An interesting topic. For some reason, I immediately thought of Éliane Radigue or Toshiro Mayuzumi

I don't know.  I think where they don't set a sacred text -- even a mantra or a koan -- then it doesn't count. But Radigue's Songs of Milarepa? Yes, that's clearly a case in point. 

[AnotherSpin]

I think things like Stockhausen's Teenagers' Song and Ligeti's requiem count, I don't think it's a good idea to speculate about composers' real intentions, and they were setting a sacred text after all.

Stockhausen was among the first names that came to my mind.

[Cato]

My first thought: Karl Amadeus Hartmann, who composed a good number of religious works before and during the Nazi era, and found the division of Germany after WW II between Communism and Freedom painful.

One of his major religious works is his last, from 1963: the cantata on Sodom and Gomorrah.

Symphonic Hymns was composed during the war (1943): he buried it with other manuscripts to preserve them from the Nazis.  But its first performance was not given until 1975!

[San Antone]

I immediately thought of Arvo Pärt, especially

Arvo Pärt: Kanon Pokajanen
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tõnu Kaljuste



" ... based on the canon of repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church. The canon had long fascinated the Estonian composer who finally decided to set it in its entirety in music written to mark the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral. Pärt: "It took over two years to compose the Kanon pokajanen, and its hold on me did not abate until I had finished the score...That may explain why this music means so much to me." As writer Uwe Schweikert has noted, it is "music full of austere, painful beauty." (ECM)

[Cato]

Depending on your definition of "post-World War II composers," we cannot forget Karl Henning, whose catalogue contains all sorts of religious works!


e.g.

[AnotherSpin]

From my perspective, sacred music in its most ideal form ought to be blissful, serene, radiant, free from tension or contradiction. A musical expression of enlightenment. I realize this wish may not resonate with everyone, and perhaps I'm asking for too much. Still, I'm curious to see how the discussion unfolds in the thread.

[Mandryka]

I immediately thought of Arvo Pärt, especially

Arvo Pärt: Kanon Pokajanen
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tõnu Kaljuste



" ... based on the canon of repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church. The canon had long fascinated the Estonian composer who finally decided to set it in its entirety in music written to mark the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral. Pärt: "It took over two years to compose the Kanon pokajanen, and its hold on me did not abate until I had finished the score...That may explain why this music means so much to me." As writer Uwe Schweikert has noted, it is "music full of austere, painful beauty." (ECM)

A fine piece of music which I listen to quite often. I didn't know it was a religious text though!

[André]

Mixing the religious (biblical and other religion-based writings) with contemporary world events has led quite a few composers to write music with an apocalyptic or dystopian bend. Sven-David Sandström among the more modern ones: The High Mass, Requiem, two towering works that leave an indelible impression.

Many others have written Requiems. As we age, the Afterlife starts becoming more tangible and what better way to reflect on it than reacting to a text dealing with the very idea of death and the Big Question Mark ?

Non-Catholic composers have written music that address a petition to God/the Universe, or reflect on spiritual ideas: Herbert Howells, Britten, Bernstein, Ib Norholm, Frank Martin, Morten Lauridsen... It's a long list, and definitely disproves the 'Gott ist tot' idea.

Modern composers/compositions often eschew adherence to the 'received text', even when writing music titled 'Mass', 'Te Deum' or 'Requiem'. Among the first to depart from the traditional concept were Brahms (through his choice of non Latin sacred writings) and Fauré - a Catholic who managed to compose a Requiem with a human dimension.

[San Antone]

Leonard Bernstein's Mass and Osvaldo Golijov's La Pasión según San Marcos are two of my favorite sacred works from any century.

Both are non-Catholic composers (both Jewish) who chose Catholic texts to set to poly-stylistic music.

[bioluminescentsquid]

I like Dutch minimalist organ music - Jan Welmers in particular.

[AnotherSpin]

What is sacred music? I see the following. Sacred music supports religious ceremonies and spiritual practices by honoring the divine through chant, hymn, anthem, liturgical setting, etc. Its melodies, breath and sacred texts guide the heart beyond the everyday, dissolving boundaries and inviting a shared union with the divine. Music becomes a bridge to the ineffable.

The ultimate recognition is that the divine you've merged with isn't confined to that moment of union but is the very ground of all being. That every person, every creature, every leaf and stone is the sacred presence. In other words, you move from a one-to-one encounter into seeing the oneness in multiplicity, recognizing the divine imprint woven through everything and everyone, and living out that vision through compassion and love.

There comes a moment when you realise that music from diverse traditions can celebrate oneness, and that pieces bound in religious form do not necessarily achieve it. And so, again, we return to our fundamental question: which music, at its very core, can truly be called sacred?

[Kalevala]

A fine piece of music which I listen to quite often. I didn't know it was a religious text though!

I enjoy that work (been awhile since I've listened to it).

K

[Mandryka]

The Ferneyhough Missa Brevis comes from his "first period" - when he was particularly free, bold, experimental, inspired, exploratory. Along with his first string quartet and Firecycle Beta, it's probably my favourite music from him.

There are two commercial recordings of it - Martin Brabbins and Odaline de la Martinez - they're quite different.

[pjme]

French and Belgian living composers writing in an "accessible", contemporary style....Do not expect anything "free, bold, experimental, ....., exploratory." here.

Hersant, who studied with Jolivet, wrote several works inspired by religion. I find his (neo-baroque/quasi baroque?) Cantique des trois enfants dans la fournaise extremely beautiful.

Way back in 1988 I heard Jean Louis Florentz "Asun" on France Musique.  It has been re broadcast once or twice... This "Requiem de la vierge" made a huge impression. unfortunately no cd, and it is not on YT.
Belgian composer Piet Swerts (°1960) writes in a very wide variety of (neo-tonal) styles, from easy, folksy pieces for brass band to monumental symphonies, cantatas and concertos.
"Heilige Seelenlust" combines the Song of songs with texts by Angelus Silesius (1624-1677). I was at the premiere and loved the unsual scoring (recorders, wind orchestra, harps, pianos and strings) and the equally unusual combination of (easy on the ear) repetitive motives and grand choral, tonal effusions....

Phaedra recorded that first performance

[pjme]

Nicolas Bacri is another "néo - tonaliste" not afraid of writing music that speaks of the sacred..;

".....Bacri's style defies classification, benchmarks, and eras. A free, independent creator, he unfolds a powerfully original, neo- or post-tonal, accessible language—without the slightest hint of consensual or regressive lukewarmness. A pure lyricism, sometimes close to Jean-Louis Florentz; by turns minimalist or fluctuating. While his early period betrays a deliberately atonal style of writing, he refutes all aesthetic dogma, all scholastic conceptions of musical art. He could make his own the poet Tristan Tzara's words: "I know that I carry the melody within me and am not afraid of it." Let us quote Bacri himself: we must strive to "examine the possibilities of reconnecting with expanded tonal symphonic thought." This is perfectly illustrated by the current recording.

The strengths of this explorer of sound? A science of choral illumination, contrapuntal rigor, rhythmic pulse. He is not a vulgar epigone, proceeding by skillful collages or artificial quotations; Bacri's talent consists in forging a complex alliance of opposites, a crossing of harmonic ogives. It is experimental and syncretic music. The cantata Arc-en-Ciel du Silence (Isiltasunaren Ortzadarra, on Basque texts – tracks 3 to 15 of disc 1) is an absolute masterpiece. A frantic rush of lyrical impulses, close to opera... Vehement and wild chords, crossed by Webernian micro-silences, followed by a burst of hypnotic, disembodied melodies. Clearly, the Song of the Earth haunts Bacri just like the Adagietto of Symphony No. 5: in track 7 we discover impalpable Mahlerian glissandi."

from:

 https://www.anaclase.com/content/nicolas-bacri

[Florestan]

Fauré - a Catholic who managed to compose a Requiem with a human dimension.

If by this you mean that the music is gentle and consoling rather than doom-and-gloom, he was not the first to manage it. Donizetti and Gounod did it before him. And curiously enough, so did a non-Catholic like Schumann.

Btw, Faure may have been raised as a Catholic but he was not particularly devout and later in life he became rather agnostic.