Franz Liszt: Pater noster (No. 7 from the oratorio Christus, S 3), an adaptation of the German "Vater unser", S 29
Franz Liszt
Born 22 October 1811 in Raiding, Austrian Empire
Died 31 July 1886 in Bayreuth
Composition:
The ‘Our Father’ was written around 1860 and was integrated into the oratorio Christus as ‘Pater noster’ between 1862 and 1865 in Rome.
Premiere:
The oratorio Christus was published in 1872 and premiered on 29 May 1873 in the Protestant Church in Weimar.
Franz Liszt's sacred vocal compositions are completely overshadowed by the charming star pianist and his virtuoso piano music and orchestral music (two symphonies – Faust and Dante – and twelve symphonic poems), which he wrote as a successful court conductor in Weimar. It is also largely unknown that Franz Liszt, due to his family background, was a Catholic who struggled with his faith. He lived in the tension between revolutionary ideas of freedom and support for political and spiritual restoration in the face of the horrors of the French Revolution. For example, during his years in Paris, Liszt enthusiastically read the book Paroles d'un croyant by the theologically very independent Abbé Félicité de Lamennais. This book influenced Liszt to write an essay on ‘future church music’ as early as 1834, which was not about church music in the narrow sense, but about the artist's ‘grande mission religieuse et sociale’. In Weimar, Liszt engaged theologically with David Friedrich Strauss' research on the life of Jesus.
In his sacred works, he attempted to combine the revival of Gregorian chant and the polyphony of Palestrina with the romantic music that was modern at the time. All his sacred compositions culminated in his nearly three-hour oratorio Christus (S 3), which Liszt composed mainly between 1862 and 1866 in Rome, in the Roman monastery of Madonna del Rosario on Monte Mario. He also used compositions from earlier periods, so that the oratorio ultimately has an extremely polystylistic character.
The Lord's Prayer is handed down as the original prayer of Jesus of Nazareth in both the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 6:9–13 in the Sermon on the Mount) and Luke (Luke 11:2–4), albeit in Greek rather than Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus himself. It contains central insights of Jesus, according to which man can communicate with the absolutely transcendent God as with a father, but should always hallow his unspeakable name (‘hallowed be thy name’).
Liszt set the Lord's Prayer to music several times, even in German in Weimar. He incorporated this Weimar version (Vater unser S 29) into his oratorio Christus and adapted it to the Catholic liturgical language of the time, Latin. This gave the Christus oratorio a middle section, together with the settings of the Beatitudes, the miraculous rescues, the discipleship of the disciples and the journey to Jerusalem. Jesus' significance could no longer be reduced to Christmas and the Passion alone, as was often the case in the Baroque musical tradition up to that point. The life and philosophy (message) of Jesus are also addressed, which means that Liszt's oratorio Christus is conceptually close to some aspects of contemporary Christian theology. And in this respect, he also ventured one of the astonishingly few settings of the ‘Our Father’ in music history.
Listen here (approx. 8 min.)!
Listening companion:
The tenors, as lead singers, intone a simple ascending melody in A flat major, with each syllable of the ‘Pater noster’ corresponding to a note. The six-part choir takes up the melody of the lead singers, but the old-church-style mood is harmonised in a romantic style and accompanied by restrained organ music.
Dolce and sempre legato, the ‘sanctificetur’ begins on the same notes, A flat, B flat, C, but then varies the melody and harmony, building towards the moment when the entire choir majestically emphasises the ‘nomen’ representing God in unison. As the song fades out, the choir gives us a glimpse of how the unspeakable name turns towards us.
In C major, the lead singers (now the alto voices) ask for the coming of the kingdom. The choir joins in, its melody rising slightly but remaining calm and steady. The longing of the ‘adveniat’ is varied several times, while the choir's sounds remain focused on hope, confidence and a new state of the world (‘regnum tuum’).
In a melancholic mood, the ‘Fiat voluntas’ is sung canonically in all voices, and the further the prayer is sung, the more it becomes clear to the pleading choir voices that what is happening on earth does not correspond to ‘Your will’.
The gaze remains directed upwards, ‘in caelo’. Liszt succeeds in creating a ‘heavenly’ melodic phrase on “caelo” in the upper voices, which is repeated twice, but then the choir returns increasingly to earthly simplicity. Homophonic and imitative elements alternate, earth and heaven are connected by the will of God, symbolised musically by parallel repetitions of the same choral setting.
The Pater Noster theme returns as a kind of false recapitulation, now based on the everyday words “panem nostrum” and in G major. The descending melody in “da nobis hodie” expresses the humility of the request.
The daily search for food leads directly to a dullness of the modulations, because it is about perceiving guilt. A crescendo leads to a plea for forgiveness and to the insight to forgive oneself.
The choir builds up to a big cry of freedom, ‘libera nos a malo,’ with tempo and dynamics.
The return to the tonic key of A flat major leads to a fugal final amen in the choir, accompanied as always discreetly by the organ, and to a hopeful and faithful affirmation of the prayer.
Pater noster,
qui es in caelis,
sanctificetur nomen tuum.
Adveniat regnum tuum.
Fiat voluntas tua,
sicut in caelo, et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.
Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem: sed libera nos a malo.
Amen.
Our Father
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
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