Visions and Dreams

Every once in a while there comes along a work of choral or vocal music in which words and music are so powerfully and movingly allied together that it almost seems as if the composer and the author were subconsciously communing with each other.   Or perhaps it might be closer to say that the writer set down the words in anticipation that the composer would some day appear to set them in perfect, shining musical order.

One thing is certain: when such a masterly alliance of words and music is achieved, it becomes pointless for any other composer ever to attempt to set the same text.

In the Pentecost scene of Sir Edward Elgar's oratorio The Kingdom the composer puts into the mouth of St. Peter the following Biblical words:

And your young men shall see visions

And your old men shall dream dreams.

I wonder whether, as he pondered that text, he was recalling the most memorable instance of visions and dreams which he had already composed?  I am, of course, referring to his greatest choral work, perhaps the greatest single work he ever set down on paper, The Dream of Gerontius.

This is one more of the many, and scandalous, instances where a major masterpiece is well-known and well-loved in the country where it was created, yet remains sadly little-known and under-valued elsewhere.  I am, of course, not directing this particular post to other Elgar lovers, who will be thoroughly familiar with Gerontius already!

The poem by John Henry (Cardinal) Newman describes an allegorical dream of the journey from death towards the judgement of God, and then to Purgatory.  It's somewhat Dante-esque, and overtly Roman Catholic in its theology.  Elgar, himself a devout Catholic, was perhaps the only British composer of the day who could do it justice.  The result is like no other choral work heard until that time, and can't be described accurately as oratorio, cantata, or by any other term.  It was, and is, and will likely remain sui generis.  

The music opens with an orchestral prelude announcing various major themes that will be heard throughout the ensuing musical journey and this flows directly into Part One, which is the deathbed scene.  Interpretation of this tends to turn on whether the conductor and soloist take it as a reminiscence of what has happened or a dreamed foreshadowing of what will happen.  What matters is to achieve proper contrasts between the different sections of what is, in effect, a lengthy death aria for Gerontius (tenor), interspersed with choral prayers.  The entire scene flows without interruption up to the final words of Gerontius.  Then, after the slightest pause, the Priest (baritone) enters to lead the chorus into the final invocatory hymn Go Forth Upon Thy Journey, Christian Soul which ends the first part.

Part Two again opens with an orchestral prelude, this time gently flowing to set the sense of timelessness of the journey which the Soul of Gerontius now undertakes, a timelessness which is discussed between the Soul of Gerontius and his guardian Angel (mezzo-soprano) in the ensuing dialogue.  From here the music moves directly into the furious chorus of the Demons, forever shut out of the House of God.  Here Elgar took his cue from Newman's vivid poetic text and fashioned one of the fiercest, most vicious pieces of choral writing ever composed.

Who, after expelling

Their hosts, gave

Triumphant still,

And still unjust,

Each forfeit crown

To psalm-droners,

And canting groaners,

To every slave,

And pious cheat,

And crawling knave,

Who licked the dust

Under his feet.

The best performances are the ones in which the choristers are actually encouraged to sing these words with a snarling tone of voice, and to get the utmost degree of mockery into the subsequent repeated cries of Ha ha!, with which they interrupt their sardonic degradation of sainthood.

The blazing fury of the Demons leads without pause to the Angel's exquisite poetic description of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi, and this in turn flows directly into the quiet beginning of the angelic hymn, Praise to the Holiest in the Height.  After the first verses of this hymn, the Soul of Gerontius sings:

The sound is like the rushing of the wind --

The summer wind -- among the lofty pines.

And here Elgar achieved a most remarkable wind-like sound from the combination of instruments and voices.  It was after composing this passage that he wrote in a letter to a friend: "The trees are singing my music -- or have I sung theirs?"  This remark captures the air almost of inevitability which hovers over every note of this remarkable score.  

The hymn builds, verse by verse, and page by page to a remarkable climax of double choir writing with full orchestra.  This passage accelerates and accelerates until it finally erupts into a rapid 1-beat-to-a-bar climactic conclusion.  But the finality of this glory is not so final as it seems, for the final cutoff of orchestra and choir leaves a diminishing timpani roll that leads into the next section.  

As Gerontius approaches the Throne of God we hear next the remarkable chromatic aria for the Angel of the Agony (bass), who pleads for the souls of the departed in memory of Christ's sufferings. This solo lies in a much lower range than the earlier solo for the Priest in Part One, but only once on records, in the very first complete recording in 1945, were the two parts given to different singers. The moment when the Soul sees God in the face is depicted by a short orchestral passage ending in a powerful fff staccato chord which then passes on to Gerontius' plea to be taken away to Purgatory.

And with that, the music flows into the final section for the Angel and chorus, Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul.  This beautiful, lyrical music brings the work to its conclusion in an air of peaceful resignation and hope.

The point and purpose of my writing about The Dream of Gerontius at this time is twofold.  First of all, as a work which I have known and loved from my earliest record-collecting days, it absolutely deserves the honour of being my 100th post on this blog.  

Second, I'm directing attention to it because, next week, the Toronto Symphony will be mounting a live performance of this masterpiece for the first time since 1985, 29 years ago.  Gerontius was a particular love of Sir Andrew Davis, and he performed it twice during his tenure as the TSO's music director.  He gave it during his first season, and that was the first time I ever heard it sung live.  The experience was so overwhelming that I rushed to the box office at the intermission and bought another ticket to hear it again 2 nights later.  Since I was a student at the time, that was a considerable extravagance, but it was worth every penny.  He performed it again in 1985, as part of his farewell season.  Somewhere during the intervening years, I also heard it given under Dr. Melville Cook at Metropolitan United Church in Toronto.  I've never heard Gerontius live since, and if it's another 29 years until the next time I may well not be around when it happens again.  If you come to the concert on Saturday, look around and say hello if you see me!

Elgar seems to have been quite well aware, as he composed Gerontius, that he was achieving something uniquely special and of enduring value -- as indeed he was.  At the end of the score, on the day he completed those ineffably lovely final pages, he appended some lines by the essayist Ruskin:

This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, 

loved and hated, like another: my life was as the vapour and is not; 

but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.