Text des Beihefts auf Deutsch - hier klicken
notes musicales en français - cliquez ici

in English
A considerable portion of Liszt’s oeuvre is made up of compositions for male choir, which have to date not truly gained their rightful place in the choral repertoire. Of the more than 60 varied male choruses, composed a cappella or accompanied by piano, organ, a few instruments, or orchestra, often extant in various complete, printed versions, a great number have not been recorded even once. The Saint Ephraim Male Choir, led by conductor Tamás Bubnó, has set itself the task of programming in concerts, recording and releasing on CD all Liszt’s works for male choir and ensembles of male voices, both the sacred and the secular. In unearthing the sources, laying the scholarly groundwork and writing the commentaries, assistance is provided by the staff of the Budapest Liszt Memorial Museum and Research Centre.

In compiling the series we have not attempted a chronological ordering. Our purpose was rather that each CD should be varied and musically enjoyable, and also that the pieces Liszt placed in a series, or that complement one another in some other way, should appear on the same disc. Nevertheless, differing versions of the same work from different periods do not necessarily find their way onto the same disc; the way Liszt grouped them into series in the earlier editions generally differs to his choice for the final versions. The basis for the performance is normally the first edition; in the case of unpublished pieces we give the location of the manuscript and the name of the person who prepared the score for performance.

In the accompanying booklet, the commentaries are given in four languages, while the texts of the pieces appear in original language and in Hungarian translation. In releasing this very first complete edition of Liszt’s male choruses prior to his bicentenary in 2011 we hope to aid in the dissemination and promotion of an area of his oeuvre – as yet known in insufficient depth and breadth – that occupied him from his thirties almost right up to his death. We hope that our contribution enables this varied musical material, ranging from brief occasional compositions to large-scale masterpieces, to enrich the repertoire of quality male choirs.

Our complete edition sets off with a CD of secular works, featuring twelve male choruses, selected by Liszt himself for part of a representative serial edition. These are complemented by two works published in the celebratory album on the occasion of the centenary of Goethe’s birth, and an extended occasional chorus made for the national assembly of German teachers.

Liszt was appointed Kapellmeister Extraordinaire in Weimar, on 2 November 1842 while still a travelling virtuoso, but did not settle in the city until early 1848 to take on fully the direction of the musical life of the town and court. The “golden age” of the capital of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach was a period of approximately fifty years at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, when due to the work of Herder, Wieland, Schiller and particularly Goethe it became the centre for German literature. Liszt’s aim was that with assistance from Grand Duke Carl Alexander he could give a firmer foundation to the cultural life, which had deteriorated into provincialism since the death of Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832), and by giving an important role to new music he could once more cause the town to flourish as a focal point of German intellectual life. An ideal occasion was the centenary of Goethe’s birth, on 28 August 1849, and as well as programming works by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn, Liszt contributed important compositions of his own. He published these (with the exception of the overture for Goethe’s Tasso, later a symphonic poem) in a “celebratory album” through Schuberth of Leipzig (see the title page in fig. III). From this collection come the opening and closing pieces on this recording, the choral piece Licht! mehr Licht! and the quartet for male solo voices Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh.

The author of the text Licht! mehr Licht! (Goethe’s letzte Worte), Chorgesang is unknown but believed by some scholars to have been Franz von Schober (1796–1882), who was once in Schubert’s circle of friends, then frequented Liszt, and settled in Weimar. It was Schober that wrote the text of the song “Weimars Todten” in the “celeb- ratory album”, and there his name is written out. In the case of the “Chorgesang” (choral song) perhaps the poet is not named because it was more important to emphasize that the title and the refrain “Light! more light!” are none other than Goethe’s last words, which in the song are interpreted as being the grand poet’s final will and testament for cultural progress. Just like the text, Liszt’s music was made especially for the festive occasion, for a four-part male choir, accompanied by three trombones and one tuba. The piece was printed before the festivities in the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung on 25 August 1849. It was performed the evening before the birthday, on 27 August 1849 in the floodlit Park on the River Ilm, in front of the Roman house. In spite of the bad weather, the work produced a tremendous effect and had very good reviews. Later an unchanged second edition of the 1849 “Celebratory album” was published. Subse- quently Liszt shortened and revised “Licht! mehr Licht!” for the inauguration on 4 September 1857 of a double sculpture by Ernst Rietschel of Goethe and Schiller in front of the Weimar Theatre; in this latter version the song is accompanied by two trumpets and three trombones. At Liszt’s request, Schuberth also published this “simplified version” in 1858.

The text for the quartet on the album, Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh, is Goethe’s second “Wanderer’s Night Song” (“Ein Gleiches – Wandrers Nachtlied II”). Liszt had already set the poem in 1842 for a four-part a cappella male choir, and in January 1844 sent it with three other choral pieces for publication to Eck & Comp. (Cologne), where it was printed as the third piece in the series “Vierstimmige Gesänge” (“Four-part songs”) dedicated to Prince Friedrich Wilhelm Constantin von Hohenzollern; the text however was replaced by a paraphrase of Goethe’s poem, made by Johannes Daniel Falk (1768–1826), an embassy counsellor in Weimar, and widely known as a folksong (“Unter allen Wipfeln ist Ruh”). In the celebratory album for the Goethe centenary Liszt replaced the original text, and made several significant corrections to the musical material (the manuscript is dated: Eisenach, 5 August 1849). In 1857 he sent the solo quartet together with the reworking of “Licht! mehr Licht!” to Schuberth; this time he added two horns to the four solo voices. In the 1858 Schuberth edition the score for the two pieces appeared separa- tely, but under the general title “Zur Goethe-Feier-Weimar” (“For the Weimar Goethe Festi- val”), with the same title page, while the parts were printed together. On this recording, both works are performed in the version given in the 1849 “Celebratory album”.

In the last years of his Weimar period Liszt struck up a friendly relationship with Christian Friedrich Kahnt (1823–1897), a German music publisher, who from 1857 as the publisher of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik was one of the most important supporters of the “Neudeutsche Schule” (New German School) gravitating around Liszt. Kahnt was primarily interested in Liszt’s vocal music. At the turn of 1859–60 he took over the complete edition of Liszt’s songs (“Gesammelte Lieder”) from the Berlin publisher Schlesinger, and willingly took on the publication of Liszt’s choral works and oratorios too. The first of the male choruses Liszt entrusted him with was the Vereins-Lied. Liszt sent the piece to Kahnt through Franz Brendel (1811–1868), the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and a fervent campaigner of the New German School, in September 1860. This was an emblematic piece Liszt had composed for the “Neu-Weimar-Verein” (New Weimar Society) formed in November 1854, which rallied against stagnant, philistine taste and critics (“trotz Philister-Geschrei”) in every field of art. Liszt was elected president of the society, and Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798–1874) the vice-president; the “Vereins-Lied”, the work of both of them, was first sung at the 2 July, 1855 meeting of the society. Following this the work was sung at other occasions in Weimar and elsewhere from manuscript scores and parts, twice slightly revised by Liszt; it seemed worthwhile printing the work in the hope of further performances.

Urging the publication of the “Vereins-Lied”, on 2 December 1860 Liszt sent Kahnt two other pieces for male chorus (“Ständchen” and “Festlied”), with the following comment: “Insofar as you are willing to fulfil my wish, and accept this pair of male choruses for publication, I recommend you bring them out as the first numbers in a small series “Compositions for Male Voices”, and just as with the Lieder, supply them with a cover title (with the data of each piece).” Thus took shape the plan for the series Für Männergesang (For Male Voices), which Liszt willingly linked to the complete edition of his songs: “The two collections (songs and pieces for male choir) have certain links; for that reason I have made this suggestion, which is now for You to decide,” he wrote to Kahnt on 19 December 1860. “A few months ago Louis Köhler wrote to me in his friendly, joking manner: ‘You really do owe us some male quartets that would change beer-drinking partners (Bierbrüder) into demigods!’ and even when the songs were published, it was my intention that the male choir pieces should soon follow.” Starting from around the 1830s, the male choral society movement was as much a social phenomenon as a musical one, always closely linked to the growth of the middle classes, and in many countries to the creation of national unity. The humorous reference to “beer-drinking partners” was quite realistic: the song-peppered meetings were mostly informal, over dinner (hence the German term: “Liedertafel”) – as is well illustrated by the title page illustration for the first edition of the “Vereins-Lied” (fig. VIII). Liszt had already come across this movement in Germany at the beginning of the 1840s, and from 1841 he regularly composed and sometimes published fine pieces, far surpassing the average quality. It was largely from these that he selected and further reworked on the basis of later experience the pieces for the collection of twelve published by Kahnt in 1861 under the series title “Für Männergesang”. The publication of the score and parts for pieces nos. 1 and 4–7 was reported by Adolph Hofmeister in the Leipzig paper Musikalisch-literarischer Monatsbericht in May, and news on the others followed in July. For the cover, with enumeration of all numbers, see fig. VI, the title page for each piece of the series is given in fig. VII; with the exception of the “Vereins-Lied” the other pieces have no second, independent title page.

The second song in the series is a setting of a poem by Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866), the Ständchen (Serenade), which Liszt usually referred to as “Hüttelein” (on account of the word beginning every verse). Liszt composed this charming, effective piece for tenor solo and four-part male ensemble in 1842. The extant manuscripts show that more than once he reworked it and wanted to insert it into several different planned series of male choruses, but it was finally first printed in the series “Für Männergesang”. Liszt himself was fond of it and presented the piece to Kahnt as a “rather moving (a little over-sweet!)” piece, which the Wiener Männergesangverein and some other choral societies had already sung successfully.

The third piece, Wir sind nicht Mumien (We are not Mummies) is again a setting of a poem, (glorifying readiness to act and progress) by Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, which is much earlier than Liszt’s collaboration with the poet in Weimar: on the original manuscript of the first draft is an after added donation note from 3 July 1843; indeed, Liszt’s first biographer, Lina Ramann believed he had composed the piece in summer 1842 on the island of Nonnenwerth in the Rhine, with three other choruses. In 1844 it was published in print by Eck & Comp. of Cologne as the first piece in “Vierstimmige Gesänge”. With substantial reworking, this piece (originally with piano accompaniment) was placed without the accompaniment into the “Für Männer-gesang” series.

Nos. 4–6 of the series, Vor der Schlacht (Before Battle), Nicht gezagt (Fear Nothing), Es rufet Gott (God calls) are a reworking of an earlier complete cycle, which was published in 1845 by a Swiss publisher (Basel, Knop) as “Drei vierstimmige Männerchöre (auch als Solo-Quartette aufzuführen)” “Three four-part male choruses (also performable by solo quartet)”. The three pieces are actually settings of two poems, because the texts of “Vor der Schlacht” and “Es rufet Gott” are identical; for the latter Liszt gave the first line as a title. Regarding the author of the poems, the composer leaves us in some doubt. In the earlier version with piano accompaniment he gives the name of the Basel doctor and poet Dr. Theodor Meyer-Merian (1818–1867), and we know that the pieces were composed for the Basler Männerchor out of gratitude for the singers honouring Liszt with a torch-lit procession after his concert in Basel on 23 July 1845. But in the a cappella version reworked for “Für Männergesang”, inexplicably the name of Carl Götze features as the writer of the texts: this may be the tenor Franz Carl Götze (1814–1888), a frequent performer of Liszt’s songs and his copyist in Weimar, with whom the composer gave several concerts from February 1844; according to his letter to Kahnt recommending his choruses for publication he imagined Götze as the soloist for “Ständchen”. In 1860, at the same time he revised the choruses, Liszt reworked the patriotic, martial choir cycle for piano with the title “Geharnischte Lieder”; the piano series was also published by Kahnt. It was under this title that the three songs for chorus were also disseminated, sung in a Hungarian translation by Kornél Ábrányi in 1865 and on several later occasions by united choirs in Hungarian national choral meetings.

The seventh piece: Soldaten-Lied aus Faust von Goethe (Soldier’s song from Faust by Goethe) was first published in the series “Für Männergesang”, but Liszt completed the first version of it (according to the date on the original manuscript) on 6 June 1844 in Port-Marly. Later the “Soldier’s song”, whose text was taken from Faust part I scene 2, was inserted into an unpublished series of six choruses (which also featured nos. 8, 9, 10 and 2 of the later “Für Männergesang”). In the reworking made for the Kahnt edition Liszt composed two trumpet and a timpani part for the chorus, tightly rhythmical throughout: particularly effective is the gradual softening of the conclusion depicting the retreat of the troops, and the pianississimo end, unusual in a march.

The only known manuscript of the eighth piece Die alten Sagen kunden (The Old Legends Tell) is in a copyist’s hand as no. 2 of the “Six choruses” mentioned above. Nothing certain is known about its genesis: the formation of the first version, with piano accompaniment in B-flat minor / B-flat major, strikingly different from the final one, can be dated to the early-mid 1840s. The author of the text has to this day not been reliably identified: on the basis of a note written by the Weimar archivist Aloys Obrist (1867–1910) on the title page of the “Six choruses” some have attributed it to Ludwig Uhland. The poem itself contains unusual contrasts: the opposition between the powerless treasure of the old legends, sunk to the bottom of the river, and the song at the bottom of the heart, striving for freedom, which Liszt expresses partly with very simple, homophonic, archaic choral writing, and partly with extremely difficult unexpected modulations. In its final version, this piece (now in A minor / A major) is lent extra colour by the second and fourth strophes’ being sung by a solo quartet, in which the first bass has a particularly important role.

One of the most poetic, lyrical pieces of “Für Männergesang” is no. 9: Saatengrün (Silky Grass), a setting of the German poet Ludwig Uhland’s (1787–1862) brief poem of twice three lines, “Lob des Frühlings” (In Praise of Spring). This chorus also had a long gestation period: three different manuscripts of it survive, the earliest with the title “Lied des Frühlings” (“Song of Spring”) in B major is from the first half of the 1840s; later Liszt composed two ad libitum piano accompaniments for this (the second in harp-like figuration), and changed the title to “Frühlingstag” (“Spring Day”), also allowing an optional transposition into B-flat major. The considerably reworked final version in “Für Männergesang” is a cappella in A major, and in verse two the originally four-part male choir becomes five-part with divisi second basses, and soloistic treatment of the first bass.

The tenth chorus is the weightiest piece of the series: Der Gang um Mitternacht (Midnight Wandering) is a perceptive and heartfelt setting of a poem by Georg Herwegh (1817–1875), an influential German revolutionary poet, for a cappella male choir, mostly in four parts but in places divided into five or even six, and with a tenor solo in the final verse. The first version, with piano accompaniment, was also inserted into the “Six choruses” of the early 1840s. The piece comprises two large formal units: the main unison theme in the first part, a motive that works stepwise up to the minor third of the key, then falls back to the tonic’s lower changing note and turns back to the tonic, is highly typical of the young Liszt’s male choruses, and is usually linked to a dark, unsettled character; here it expresses the mood of agitated wandering in the night. The mystical mood of the dreams of the tired, sleeping world are depicted by soloistic treatment of the bass in the lower register and daring modulations in answering chords from the other parts. In the second, C major part, a twining tenor solo joins the slow, hymn-like prayer of the homophonic choral chords, then an even slower, gradually softening coda built on a variation of the main theme brings the piece to a close.

The Festlied (Festival Song) published as no. 11 has as its original title Zu Schillers Jubelfeier, Festlied (For Schiller’s jubilee, festival song). It was written in the weeks preceding the centenary festival of Friedrich Schiller’s (1759-1805) birth on 10 November 1859. For a Germany that was a mosaic of small states, once more hampered in its progress after the putting down of the revolutionary movements of 1848, the celeb- ration of the most important figure in classical German literature alongside Goethe, (in the words of a journalist praising the festival) “gave an opportunity for a fleeting moment to find and express its moral unity”. Referring to Schiller’s art, Franz von Dingelstedt (1814–1881) (a German poet and dramatist, also the superintendent of the Weimar Theatre from 1857) expresses in his Festlied the ideas of German unity, freedom and joie de vivre, and according to the first published edition in the 12 November 1859 edition of the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung, Liszt set it to a melody “in the folk style” (“im Volkston”). In the first two, identical, verses the baritone soloist intones unaccompanied the solemn melody, like a chant for the masses, after which the four-part male choir replies with a buoyant, glorifying song. The third verse is also started by the baritone, with a different melody, with which the choir joins in, then they answer one another, and finally unified they sing the praises of Germany, to be born again through the power of the festival. “Let nobody be alarmed by the extreme simplicity of this song,” wrote Liszt to a pupil, Ingeborg Stark on 2 November 1859, “this is not about flaunting musical skill, but rather about writing simply forty bars, which are very easy to sing and everyone can remember. For this I had to dress my Muse in a shirt, or to use a more German metaphor, ‘I gave the Lady a Bavarian jacket!’” Though Liszt himself was fond of calling this chorus the “Schiller-Lied”, in the “Für Männergesang” series the reference to the Schiller jubilee was omitted, the title being simply “Festlied”.

The twelfth piece, which closes the series, is a setting of the first two four-line strophes of Gottes ist der Orient (The Orient is the Lord’s), from Goethe’s “Talismans”, a poem of five short verses from the volume “West-eastern Divan”. The early, B major version, which according to Ramann was written in 1842, was printed in 1844 by Eck & Comp. in the series of four choruses “Vierstimmige Männergesänge” (as the only a capella piece together with the first versions of the choruses with piano accompaniment “Wir sind nicht Mumien” and “Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh”, and also with the “Das düstre Meer umrauscht mich”, later not republished). For the series “Für Männergesang” Liszt revised, shortened and simplified the a cappella “Gottes ist der Orient” chorus considerably, transposing it to A major. With its finely-wrought text and calmly balanced, lofty musical writing it is one of the finest pieces of the set.

The Festgesang (Festive Song) is one of Liszt’s occasional pieces, written for the assembly of German school teachers held in Weimar on 27 May 1858 for four-part male choir with ad libitum organ accompaniment. According to the manuscript and the first edition, published in 1859 (Weimar, T. F. A. Kühn), the complete title of the work is: “Festgesang zur Eröffnung der zehnten allgemeinen deutschen Lehrerversammlung” (“Festive song for the opening of the tenth assembly of German school teachers”), and Liszt’s work was dedicated to the “entire teaching body of the German folk-schools” (“Dem gesamten deutschen Volksschul-Lehrerstande gewidmet”). The General German Teachers’ Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Lehrerverein) founded in Eisenach in autumn 1848 held its assemblies in a different venue each year, which assisted the teachers’ scholarly and social development, and improved the quality of teaching. Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s poem, which Liszt set, speaks on behalf of the teachers of the sacrificial work whose finest reward is the flourishing of youth, which “glorifies God and cheers Mankind”. This thought must have been very dear to Liszt, who throughout his life was an impassioned and selfless teacher. The “Festgesang” has a strophic structure, with three (only slightly different) verses and a coda, and though it does not strive for the kind of “popularity” of the “Festlied” composed in the same year for the Schiller festival, it was obviously written with choirs of accomplished amateur musicians (perhaps teachers) in mind.

Mária Eckhardt
Translated by Richard Robinson

---

Saint Ephraim Male Choir

The choir was founded in 2002 by Tamás Bubnó, a Hungarian church musician and conductor. When he was collecting religious melodies in the Subcarpathian area in the Ukraine for his DLA thesis, entitled Origin and Variants of Greek Catholic Liturgical Chants in Hungary and the Subcarpathian Area, one day he discovered an unknown manuscript of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom for male choir, composed by János Boksay; a Greek Catholic priest and composer at the turn of the century (1874-1940).

He decided to gather some of his friends, all professional singers working with the best choirs in Budapest (the Male Choir of the Defence Ministry, Choir of the Hungarian Radio, the National Choir, the Tomkins Vocal Ensemble, etc.) and some of his former students (from the Schola Cantorum Budapestiensis) to perform this work.

The choir started to participate regularly in Byzantine liturgical services, mostly in Greek Catholic Churches in Budapest and other Hungarian cities. The ensemble took its name after Saint Ephraim, the Syrian (307-378), who was the first great Byzantine hymnographer, called “The Harp of the Holy Ghost” by his contemporaries.

The first CD of the choir, the Boksay-Liturgy that Bubnó discovered, was published by Hungaroton. Their repertoire was enhanced by some classics of Slavonic-Orthodox music, documented on their second recording, that appeared on the label Orpheia in 2006. The album is a compilation of Greek-Byzantine, Hungarian and Slavonic ecclesiastical music and it features a rarity: the one and only motet of Ferenc Liszt in Old Church Slavonic (Slavimo Slavno Slaveni). The choir received significant sponsoring at that time from the National Council of the Ruthenian Minority of Hungary.

In 2006 the Saint Ephraim Male Choir won the category of Professional Chamber Choir in the 25th Anniversary Competition in the Hajnówka International Festival of Orthodox Music (Poland). They were the first ensemble coming from a non-Slavonic country to win first prize in the history of the competition.

In the last couple of years they have given concerts in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Rome and Paris. They have been invited to the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany (2007), Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise (2009), Festival de Royaumont (2008) in France, and have toured Slovakia, Poland, Serbia as well. The Saint Ephraim Male Choir has also performed at the most prominent festivals in Hungary: Budapest Spring Festival (2006, 2008), Valley of Arts, Kapolcs (2006, 2007), Arcus Temporum Festival, Pannonhalma (2008), Miskolc Opera Festival (2007), Tchaikovsky Marathon, Budapest (2008), Ördögkatlan Fesztivál (2008, 2009).

The choir’s main goal remains to perform the ecclesiastical music of the Byzantine rite in an authentic way. However, for thematic concerts the ensemble performs other compositions from the Western tradition (Gregorian chants, Protestant songs and gospel), and secular pieces as well, provided they can be performed by a chamber choir. Their concerts singing Liszt and Bartók were enormously successful at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. They have plans to record all choral compositions of the two great Hungarian composers alongside recording other pieces of Byzantine music.