Wagner’s choruses are amongst the glories of his stage works. They are central to the action, not extraneous to it, and the mood and style of each reflects the dramatic imperatives of the work concerned. The aptness of these choruses is illustrated in the final act of Der fliegende Holländer where three contrasting groups interact with each other at the quayside of a Norwegian village. Sailors on the deck of Daland’s ship, relieved to be home after their long voyage, flirt with village girls who are setting up food and wine on the quay. Then both groups take an interest in the mysterious Dutch ship, dark and silent, that lies nearby. The banter between sailors and girls is tossed back and forth like a verbal dance, starting with light-hearted teasing and ending with speculation that the Dutch seamen are silent because they are ghosts and their sweethearts are long dead. When the ghostly crew does finally answer, the rollicking tone of the music is swept away in a terrifying battle of nerves. Wagner was just 28 when he completed The Flying Dutchman, but with it he found his true voice, and its dramatic themes were to appear again in other works over the next forty years.
Lohengrin inhabits a very different world, a Pre-Raphaelite realm of intense colours and mystical happenings. The excerpts in this collection display the shimmering, contrapuntal quality of this music, beginning with trumpets calling and answering from the towers of the citadel at Antwerp. Dawn is breaking and the fanfares herald the wedding day of Elsa of Brabant and her champion, the knight of the unknown name. The pace quickens as nobles and their retainers gather in front of the Minster. Then a long train of ladies proceeds from the women’s quarters, with Elsa radiantly attired. The procession wends its way slowly towards the great door of the Minster amidst expressions of wonder and happiness until an unexpected orchestral modulation injects a chill into the blissful mood. Ortrud blocks Elsa’s path, determined to bring her wedding plans undone. That night, after the joyous celebrations of the wedding feast, two processions escort Elsa and Lohengrin to the bridal chamber. This chorus, gentle and transparent – so finely spun in its original context – is imbued with tenderness and trust. What could possibly go wrong?
The spectacle that features prominently in Lohengrin is foreshadowed in the second act of Tannhäuser as the guests assemble for the contest of song and sing the praises of the Landgrave Hermann, Prince of Thuringia. By the end of the act, those same guests will have driven Tannhäuser from the hall to seek absolution in Rome. In the final act, a band of pilgrims returns from the holy city, rejoicing in their re-found state of grace. Wolfram and Elisabeth are expecting to see Tannhäuser amongst the pilgrims but he has not returned. In her grief, Elisabeth turns aside and kneels at the wayside shine of the Virgin to pray for his soul. It is a poignant scene and its music, once heard, is never forgotten.
A rather different devotional scene opens Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, completed in 1867. In this massive work, reformation, renaissance and renewal find expression through the metaphor of baptism. The action takes place on and around St John’s Day (John the Baptist) which is the name day of the hero of the work, the cobbler-poet Hans (Johannes) Sachs, whose Baptist-like role facilitates personal reconciliation, the ‘washing away’ of delusions, and a renewal of the arts based on true inspiration. In the opening scene, the church congregation asks John the Baptist to grant them grace on the banks of the Jordan and, in the final act Sachs answers their prayer on the banks of the Pegnitz. The prelude leads directly into a chorale – the finest example of this genre since the time of Bach. Thus Wagner introduces an important piece of imagery: the Reformation as a force for social and intellectual renewal. Vespers is just ending as the young Franconian knight Walther von Stolzing catches the eye of Eva, daughter of the goldsmith Veit Pogner, and during the chorale we hear a solo cello and then an oboe, conveying the glances and signals exchanged between the two young people.
A typical Mastersong, Sachs tells Walther, is made up of two ‘Stollen’ or sections that are similar but not exactly the same, followed by an ‘Abgesang’, itself composed of two related sections. Die Meistersinger follows the same pattern in the structure of its acts, and so the entire work becomes a ‘Mastersong’. The second scene of Act III takes place on the festival meadow outside the walls of the city, where a song contest is held every Midsummer’s Day (St John’s Day). Wagner’s idea in 1845 was that Die Meistersinger with its popular contest for the people should be a ‘pendant’ to Tannhäuser with its lofty contest for the nobility. During the twenty years or so that separated the two works, Die Meistersinger grew to become the largest and most elaborate of the individual dramas. Extended choruses enrich in the final scene where various trade guilds arrive in their festal finery and sing of the importance of their trades to the life of mid-16th century Nuremberg. They are followed by the apprentices who involve the pretty girls in a spirited dance, and by the Mastersingers themselves, whose arrival is proclaimed by music heard in the famous prelude, including an authentic theme of the medieval Mastersingers. Then the crowd catches a glimpse of the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs and is inspired to sing a great ‘set piece’ chorus that begins: ‘Awake! Day is drawing near; I hear in the green hedgerow an enchanting Nightingale’. These are the words of the historical Hans Sachs, written in homage to Martin Luther (the nightingale) and the Reformation (the new day). The text, no less than the music of Die Meistersinger, is a wonder and rewards close scrutiny.
The crowd that assembles in the second act of Götterdämmerung could hardly be more different from that on the festival meadow. Hagen, the loveless son of Alberich summons the Gibichung vassals to war; but it is a joke because they are really being summoned to a double wedding between Gunther and the abducted Brünnhilde, and Gutrune and the deceived Siegfried. This is the only chorus in the Ring, but its brutal sentiments and forceful music convey perfectly the prevailing atmosphere at this crucial point in the drama.
Parsifal was another of Wagner’s mature works that underwent a very long gestation but it is a work of translucent beauty, many-layered meaning and textual economy. It became the composer’s farewell to the world, and it sums up a lifetime of thought and experience. It reflects the moral journey undertaken by the simple boy Parsifal, and its central message is that human beings, with all their mistakes, ill judgements and foolish actions can be redeemed through compassion. These sentiments are reflected in the magnificent choruses: the revelation of the compassionate significance of the Grail to Parsifal under the guidance of the elderly knight Gurnemanz; the torment suffered by the community of Grail Knights when compassion is denied them, and compassion’s transforming and healing grace when offered with an open heart.
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This essay was written by Peter Bassett for the 2013 Eloquence CD Wagner Choruses, featuring the Chorus and Orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival in live recordings conducted by Woldemar Nelsson, Peter Schneider, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Silvio Varviso, Pierre Boulez and James Levine. Decca 480 7067.
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