Requiem

Augustus II "the Strong" was quite a dude. Prince Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, he gets most of the credit for building Dresden into the architectural and musical capital it was in the 18th Century. His sobriquet was given him not only for his ability to bend and snap horseshoes in his bare hands but also for his polyphiloprogenitivity. (I've stored that word up for years, waiting for this moment.) He did gallop his realm into crisis, it must be confessed, but it was a wild ride. He also ate himself into diabetes and got enormously fat before his sudden death in 1763. There's an ample biography of him on wikipedia, worth a look.

The funeral of Augustus II was the specific occasion for the composition of the Requiem in C major by Johan Adolf Hasse (1699-1783). The Elector's patronage had made Hasse perhaps the most successful and widely known composer of the 18th Century. Hasse paid his royal friend back with a triumphant musical farewell. Just the choice of C major as the key tells a lot; this is not a requiem of grief and penitence. Instead it's a festive procession through the open gates of heaven, richly caparisoned with joy and pomp. Gus the Strong would have loved it. It's also a superb oratorio/cantata, evidence that Hasse's huge success was fully deserved. The forces required are large: full strings and chorus plus pairs of flutes, horns, oboes, trumpets, bassoons, organ, and tympani, with four vocal soloists. The music comprises 21 movements, with maximum variety and color. It was an immense success, as proven by the number of copies that have survived in libraries across Europe. Gus was buried in Poland, by the way, where his memory is still execrated, but his heart was buried in Dresden.

Also performed on this CD is Hasse's Miserere in E minor, a piece that sounds at times quite a lot like Mozart's Requiem. It's heart-felt, dolorous, and penitential, but wends gracefully toward consolation. Check the dates on Hasse's works and you'll be surprised to find that he was writing "Sturm und Drang" romanticism while Haydn and Mozart were toying with divertimenti. Hasse was enormously productive - there must have been productivity juices in the water supplies of 18th C Europe - and he lived to the age of 84. His music is still not performed as often or as widely as it deserves, and his dozens of operas, I predict, will be the next "discovery" in European theaters.

This performance by the Belgian ensemble Il Fondamento brims with energy and insight. A well-trained period musician might notice a few technical blemishes but would pay them no regard in the presence of such vivid musicality. Especially wonderful are the many duet passages for soprano and alto, sung with luscious harmony by Greta De Reyghere and Susanna Moncayo von Hase. Conductor Paul Dombrecht achieves brilliance also by knitting together the multifarious recitativos, arias, and choruses into a work of monumental unity. The case has been made, music lovers, with this recording and other CDs by 'Il Seminario Musicale' that Johann Adolf Hasse was, and is, a composer of the highest rank.

Like a previous reviewer, I was intrigued by some fairly extravagant claims for this music and investigated forthwith. A few hearings have failed to convince me that we encounter here anything more startling than a well-crafted, incongruously perky (for a Requiem) work which rather too often either by design or accident pays all-too-recognisable homage to Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater" without mimicking that composer's melodic invention. I know we must adjust to the aural context and not impose Romantic notions on mid 18C sensibilities but I do find the irrepressible bounciness of, for example, the Kyrie (track 2) absurdly cheerful in a manner proleptic of Rossini in his least reverent liturgical mode and there is many an occasion when I smiled at the mismatch between text and the music for all that I enjoyed it. But after all, this is a Requiem in C major and doesn't seem to take all that death stuff too seriously. All those passages featuring woodwind and soloists singing in thirds are not meant to exude morbidity or invite reflection.

The Miserere is grander and gloomier and its influence on Mozart's Requiem is very apparent. I found the strident whine of the period strings doubling the choir wearing on the ear. Ultimately, it, also, is quite conventional, employing the usual range of recognisable musical devices without much that surprises occurring. You never catch your breath in admiration the way you do in Mozart.

On my equipment I sometimes found that the choir were rather recessed in comparison with the foregrounded instruments and the soloists are of the faceless, unobjectionable sort favoured by period performance practitioners, who sing nicely in tune without unduly imposing too much personality on proceedings. There is quite a prolonged reverberation in the recorded sound which presumably also occludes the text somewhat.

Interesting but hardly life-changing. I cannot see any sudden rush to revive more of Hasse's output, although a coterie of enthusiasts will wish it.

The quote above was uttered by Johann Adolfe Hasse upon meeting the boy Mozart. It was prophetic indeed.

My reasons for purchasing this disc were twofold: my centre of gravity is the second half of the Eighteenth Century; moreover Amazon was being haunted by a variant of Barry Goldwaterism: "Extremism in the defence of Hasse is no vice." I was stupefied by claims that he is a composer of the highest rank (and therefore enrolled in the Pantheon alongside Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart and Haydn); furthermore, "his choral works are the equal of Mozart's Requiem and Mass in C Minor" and "his dramatic works will be the next big thing in the opera establishments of the world". Wow - that's betting the house! How could I resist such a challenge and all the more so as I wanted it to be true! If this composer was good enough for the young Mozart - who knew the arias from 'Ruggiero, ovvero l'eroica gratitudine' by heart - surely he should sate a mere Antipodean? Or could one suggest that the tyranny of the immediate is pertinent here - and Mozart pointedly makes no reference to Hasse whatsoever in his adulthood.

When I survey the first of the two works on this disc - the Requiem in C Major - one of Mozart's own quotes comes to mind: "Melody is the essence of music. I would compare one who composes melodies to a noble racehorse and a mere contrapuntist to a hired post-hack."

While it would be wrong to assign Hasse to the second category (on a number of levels), melody is not his strong suit. Hasse's Requiem is empowered by mechanistic figurations from the strings, fanfares and short-winded motifs - to wit the aria "Inter oves locum praesto" which is replete with all the rhetorical devices of the day with some empty coloratura thrown in for good measure. His craftsmanship is not in question: Hasse certainly knows how to pace and close a work (such as the Kyrie). His deployment of the chorus is masterly. There are times when Hasse's approach is not ineffective: the Hostias and the Agnus Dei are atmospheric enough even if no melody is readily detectible. On the other hand, Hasse steers dangerously near `Oompa Loompa Land' in his jaunty treatment of the Dies Irae and the Tuba Mirum - and one can actually sing "oom-pah loom-pa" as an accompaniment to the Lux Aeterna (try it for yourself). The Domine Jesu Christe is vin ordinaire in anyone's cellar. The Sanctus is a triumph of energy over inspiration. Behold, a melody of sorts is identifiable in the Benedictus even if it flaps around on the runway rather than taking to the skies.

Listen as I might, I failed to come across a single passage that took my breath away, enjoyable enough as some of it is.

In the Eighteenth Century order of things, a Requiem written in C Major has a different brief to a counterpart written in D Minor. Still, a comparison is invited where the text draws a response in the minor from Hasse (such as the Dies Irae or the Lachrymosa). Unlike K 626 where the listener is compelled to "Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit / And look on death itself! Up, up, and see / The great doom's image!" there is no such injunction in Hasse's Requiem. There is no Death; no Oblivion; no "Consummatum est''; no Damnation with "searing flames" and no Redemption in this earthbound, dutiful work.

The Miserere in E Minor is made of sterner stuff and one can understand why it was so widely propagated in its day. Again, it is not the last word in melodic invention but it firmly held my attention from first note to last. Even so, it is middling compared with the likes of Litaniae de Venerabili Altaris Sacramento (K 243). I am not in any hurry to return to it.

There is an abyss between genius and mere talent and this maxim is regnant here. By all means purchase this disc - it is a worthy acquisition - and compare Hasse and Mozart in their treatment of the Requiem Aeternam, the Kyrie, Dies Irae, the Rex Tremendae, the Recordare, the Domine Jesu Christe. It is a non-event. All in all I rank this composition alongside the Requiem written by Michael Haydn for Prince-Archbishop Schrattenbach. A comparison with Gossec's Requiem (what a Tuba Mirum!) is not to its advantage.

Re the performances. Sure, the orchestra at times sounds like a hurdy gurdy in their vinegary timbre but one should not be curmudgeonly. It was a noble endeavour to exhume these works from oblivion. The singers are all easy on the ear (thankfully it's a counter-tenor free zone) The recording is exemplary.

To sum up, the honourable Senator from Arizona is not going to get my vote but I am still glad nevertheless to have befriended this genial composer and put a face to the name.

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