Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke

Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke
The Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke (The Cornet) for contralto and small orchestra

Year of composition

1942-1943

Duration

58'

Scored for

contralto and small orchestra: 2 1 1 1 - 2 1 1 0 - alto sax(E♭) - timp, perc(2) - harp - cel. - piano - strings

Reiten - Der kleine Marquis - Jemand erzählt von seiner Mutter - Wachtfeuer - Das Heer - Ein Tag durch den Troß - Spork - Der Schrei - Der Brief - Das Schloß - Rast - Das Fest - Und Einer steht - Bist Du die Nacht? - Hast Du vergessen? - Die Turmstube - Im Vorsaal - War ein Fenster offen? - Ist das der Morgen? - Aber die Fahne ist nicht dabei - Die Fahne - Der Tod - Im nächsten Frühjahr

Publication information

Universal Edition (UE11491/UE11492); reduced score for voice and piano available

Text(s)

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Text file

  1. https://www.frankmartin.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/1942-Der-Cornet-de.pdf
  2. https://www.frankmartin.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/1942-Le-Cornette-fr.pdf

Commentary

Der Cornet
During the year 1942, while searching for a suitable text as a basis for a cycle of Lieder with piano, my wife suggested the admirable poem and prose by Rilke: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke. This work is hardly known at all to French-speakers; it is almost untranslatable and in fact the translations available in bookshops do it no justice at all. I was immediately enthusiastic about this narrative, so strong and at the same time so short and so delicate, but I put it to one side at first; it did not fit my requirements: some twenty-odd Lieder, isn’t that a bit much? Besides, Rilke’s story, although divided into small tableaux, is an epic, a chain of events following each other and not a lyrical exposition of the development of a sentiment, which seems to me to be the literary basis needed for a song cycle. In fact I had strong doubts about setting text to music in a foreign language, as I had always aimed at reaffirming the exact form and expression of language in a vocal composition.
 However, the strength and charm of Rilke’s work weakened my resistance. Then meeting Elisabeth Gehri and the chance that she would be the performer, changed my mind about the cycle of Lieder and I decided to write a larger work. The encouragement I received from Paul Sacher gave the final touch to my decision and my project took its definite form, giving me the finesse and transparency of a chamber orchestra to accompany the alto voice. Nothing could suit the text better: an epic poem, but written succinctly and delicately, full of nuances even in the harshness of war scenes. The small orchestra could express all colours with no loss caused by the mass of performers. As for the form, the division into scenes that I had done in Le Vin herbé without altering Bédier’s text worked even better from Rilke’s own hand, more clearly and more defined. The problem with the German language was resolved by close collaboration with my wife whose German was like a second native language. In this way, we often discussed and decided together the importance, the length and the pitch required for the different syllables of the text, and also the subtle, often complex and elusive nuances of expression that are Rilke’s charm.
 What can I say about the music, other than that I tried to find for each tableau a musical form as well suited as possible to its literary form, that I tried also to keep each fragment’s own character, whether a simple narrative, description, lyrical explosion or profound development of sentiments. In short, I attempted to remain as faithful as I could to this text, as faithful as my deep admiration prescribed. After spending a year living with this text, better still to have relived this text, word by word, slowly scrutinizing all its subtleness, and experiencing all its emotional power, I have more than the memory of pleasurable work and spiritual joy; it has somehow marked my life. My dearest wish is that others may find in my music a little of that which Rilke’s poem has given me.

Frank Martin
From Alter und neue Musik, 25 Jahre Basler Kammerorchester (Zürich, 1952), published in A propos de… commentaires de Frank Martin sur ses œuvres (Neuchâtel, 1984) | English translation by Rachel Ann Morgan

___

My reasons for setting Rilke’s Der Cornet to music
[Pourquoi j’ai mis en musique Der Cornet de Rilke]

Why do we musicians take hold of a text, a poem, to overload it with music? Was it not finished, self-sufficient, completed as a poem and could we not leave its literary perfection in peace?
 It’s true, one could reply that if we want to write for the voice, then we must find words to be pronounced, for there is nothing more sad and pointless than a voice limited to vocalising: for a moment, it’s perfect; in the long run, any other instrument would be better. A question of habit? I don’t think so. The person vocalising nearly always gives the impression of foolishness, as soon as it lasts longer than a short reverie, a brief moment when a thought dissolves into an inexplicable feeling. When the moment has passed we are left with something abnormal: imbecility or folly unless it concerns an operetta character who does not want to express his thoughts.
 But this reply is worthless: we do not write vocal music just to use singers. It is when we want have a text added to our music, when we want the explicit expression of a thought or a feeling, that we choose to write for the voice, although we cannot be certain of what the thought or feeling must be before finding the right text. That’s exactly where I was, looking for a series of poems in order to write a cycle of songs, when my wife brought to my attention Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke. I immediately admired this work, but in my estimation, it was not apt for what I had in mind. To tell the truth I had found a suite of short poems, but too numerous for a song cycle; more than twenty. On the other hand, they tell a story, forming a short epic; they do not develop, in a suite of lyrical pieces, expression of intimate feelings.
 I could not, however, get this piece out of my mind. I kept coming back to it, and I felt, in a way, that I must continue. I therefore gave up the idea of a song-cycle and began a much larger undertaking which needed orchestral accompaniment. The subject itself seemed to exclude the use of a choir and I kept to my initial idea of using one voice only. I wanted to give more unity to the interpretation and conserve in Rilke’s work the character of a story-teller, of an epic poem told by a troubadour, avoiding the sort of dramatic sentiment that a dialogue of several voices can evoke. The chance of having Elisabeth Gehri as the performer encouraged me along these lines: her personality and the richness of her voice permitted me to be bold. When the collaboration with Paul Sacher and his chamber orchestra was assured, the physical details of my composition were finalised. All my work was focussed on these two conclusions: a very flexible alto voice with a wide range and a small string orchestra with the addition of a few wind instruments, piano and harp.
 Nothing could be better suited to Rilke’s work, this short epic of twenty-odd poems, each of which is an exquisite little poem in prose, with its own colour and rhythm and keeping an incredibly refined sensitivity, even in depictions of war horrors. So refined that I often wondered if the music could really follow all the fluctuations of Rilke’s thoughts and his subtle turns of expression. I tried my best, searching constantly to arrive at a musical form that could follow and accompany the literary form as closely as possible, and this musical form should be a portrait of the literary form.
 This is the way, and the only way, that we musicians can become portrait painters. Different painters can create portraits of the same person, close likenesses and yet very different; in the same way musicians can give totally different musical images of the same poem, still remaining faithful to it. Yet the poem must mean more to them than just a pretext to make music. This is a matter of taste: it is often said that the poorer and more mediocre the poem, the better music can give it wings to soar and that the more perfect the text, the more revered by the composer, causes a barrier and puts a brake on him. As for myself, I do not fear barriers: we learn to jump over them, and use brakes to avoid accidents. I am, furthermore, incapable of a sense of contempt for literary text; I remain, in spite of myself, submissive which makes me choose high-quality texts which as a consequence are well-known.
 Should I apologise? In fact, it is all at my own risk. You don’t commit murder by creating a portrait; and the more well-known the subject, the less risk of harm by distortion on the canvas: the painter alone is responsible for the consequences. That is why I took on Rilke’s Der Cornet, thus running the double risk, the one just mentioned, the other being to set words to music in a language which was unfamiliar to me. I would certainly never have dared take such a risk without the full support of my wife whose German was her second mother tongue. She helped me understand all the nuances of Rilke’s language and taught me, as my work progressed, its rhythm and inflexions.
 But if there is a risk to setting well-known and loved works of literature to music, it also has advantages; it can be seen as a gesture to the audience, a captatio benevolentiae (winning of goodwill), which would not give all the glory to the composer. This is particular to all great subjects; this is what was rejected by artists of a certain era. It was seen as facile and it seemed more noble and purer to demonstrate one’s art by painting an apple and a knife rather than the transfiguration. Certainly, this desire and faith were necessary in their time; art should for once be laid bare, alone in its own right. A painter needs to be all alone to deal with his problems of light and shapes, a musician with those of sound and rhythm, in order to be totally conscious of these problems and to overcome them with his own powers and not just resolve them according to listless tradition. I believe that we are no longer at this point; we scrutinized these problems posed by art too much, turning them over and over, becoming too conscious, risking hypnotism and slavery. There is only one way to escape, that is to force these problems to be of use, but not to serve ourselves, otherwise we would be subject to their slavery again. We must in all honesty give up chasing after this misleading image of beauty for its own sake, which for decades has been given so many names: art for art, pure poetry, absolute music, what do I know? This absolute beauty, apparent to us in some particular works, certainly unintended by their creators, was for them and their contemporaries often full of affective sentiments. Because they were perfectly accomplished they seem to us now to be pure and shining with beauty alone. But their origins were human before they became divine and it is only vain pride that makes us want to reach such summits ourselves. We should give up chasing such a goal, not because it is inaccessible, but because it does not depend on us whether we achieve it or not.
 To escape from the grip of these problems posed by our art, the problems of musical language for us composers, we just need to put them at the disposal of something greater than ourselves, a subject, a theme next to which we are insignificant. It does not concern language itself any more, but language functioning as expression. Who can remain oblivious to the point at which the choice, the conception itself of the subject, the idea, becomes the determining factor.
 But there is another thing: without aiming at success itself, (which is fine when it arrives but most unpleasant to have to chase after) the artist desires with all his soul that his work may reach other people and that it may mean something to them. Beware of those who claim only to write for their own satisfaction: they are either just dabblers or those whose pride brings them close to insanity. But, I must say that present musical language is not familiar to most listeners; they lack references in this language; they do not know to what it relates because they cannot associate it with any expression. Contemporary works of pure music that have found immediate response by vast audiences are rare. Contemporary composers have more often been discovered by the public through opera, ballet or oratorio. To mention a few, Pelléas et Mélisande, ballets of Stravinsky, le Roi David, Wozzek, Matthis der Mahler. This is only natural: once the new language is recognised by the direct expression it gives to text, whether lyric or dramatic, or even a scenario if it’s a ballet, all the composer’s work becomes clear, we know what he’s talking about, even when his instrumental works are pure music. And moving the public towards true understanding of contemporary art, this art which cannot live and blossom if it is deprived of all support, seems to me no less important than the relief felt after brain-numbing hypnosis for aesthetic problems.
 This is why I have written music intimately linked to a literary text, as I did in Le Vin herbé, this is why I have set Der Cornet by Rilke to music. In truth, I really wanted to do it and it is thus that I justify this desire. And the wonderful and long-lasting joy that I felt during this work dispelled my last doubts.

Article written by Frank Martin for DU (Zürich, February 1944), published in A propos de… commentaires de Frank Martin sur ses œuvres (Neuchâtel, 1984) | English translation by Rachel Ann Morgan

Premiere

World première: Basle, 9 February 1945. Elsa Calveti, alto; Paul Sacher, conductor

Recordings (selective list)

  • Philippe Huttenlocher, baritone
    Collegium Academicum de Genève
    Robert Dunand, conductor
    GALLO CD-725 ℗ + © 1993 (FMS059)

  • Christianne Stotijn, contralto
    Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur
    Jac van Steen, conductor
    MDG 901 1444-6 ℗ + © 2007

  • Marjana Lipovšek, contralto
    ORF-Symphonyorchester
    Lothar Zagrosek, conductor
    ORFEO C 164 881 A ℗ + © 1988 (FMS147)

  • Jard van Nes, contralto
    Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam
    Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor
    Recording Vredenburg Utrecht, 5/1993
    Philips 442 535-2 ℗ 1995 (FMS176)

  • Okka von der Damerau, mezzo-soprano
    Philharmonia Zürich
    Fabio Luisi, conductor

    Philharmonia Records - Operahaus Zürich ℗ + © 2017

  • Brigitte Balleys, mezzo-soprano
    Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne
    Jesus Lopez Cobos, conductor
    CASCAVELLE VEL 1020 ℗ + © 1992 (FMS156)

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