Berlioz� Grand Messe des Morts and the Burkean Sublime
Russell Alt
The Archangel Michael, segment
of The Last Judgment altarpiece
(1446-52) by Rogier van der Weyden
The second movement of Hector Berlioz Grand Messe des Morts is perhaps one of the most highly recognized scorings of the fiery fourteenth century Latin poem that constitutes the most dreadful and fearsome portion of the traditional Requiem Mass. Known as the Dies Irae, or Day of Wrath, the text mingles descriptions of catholic apocalypse at the Last Judgment with individual supplications for eternal clemency. Drawing from the texts well of misery, Berlioz so skillfully renders the impassioned terror of the Dies Irae that one critic has remarked that, Berlioz, more than any other composer, has understood our primeval terror of death combined with our fascination with it. His musical treatment, for all its liberties with the prescribed text, preserves that dichotomy of abject fear and trusting familiarity with which man in the Middle Ages viewed his relationship with his God (Nick Jones).
According to Adam Phillips, [t]he sublime was that which ruptured the continuity of experience and tradition (xv). Given that the text of the Dies Irae in conjunction with the accompanying music evokes scenes of universal death and destruction, that it describes the ultimate rupture in continuity, my reason for having selected this particular work of art is self-evident. But, as Boultons quote on page xi of the introduction to Burkes Enquiry notes, throughout the Enquiry Burke is principally concerned with the responses of the human mind to emotive objects and experiences, so it will be the concern of my analysis to briefly explore in which ways the Dies Irae of Berlioz Requiem lends itself to being read within the Burkean parameters of the Sublime vis-à-vis the subject
In a style strikingly akin to Gregorian chant, orchestral basses intone the first fragments of this movements melody. Their plaintive lamentation is made all the more moody by a haunting pianissimo which is retained throughout the languid ascension of a minor scale. The orchestral basses melodic fragment decays in their return to the minor tonic whereupon the choirs sopranos take up a new melody. The sopranos reply sotto voce to the orchestral basses. Their ethereal pitch in conjunction with the opening lines of the poem constitute the first incantation of the Day of Wrath[1]:
Dies irae, dies illa Day of wrath, that day
Solvet saeclum in favilla will dissolve the world into ashes
Already with the first two lines of the sung text, Berlioz pulls the listener out of what Burke argues is the common state of indifference. The sopranos reluctant parlaying of impending doom excites ideas of danger and pain (those elements which sustain the source of the sublime) in the listener, especially by playing on mechanisms of self-preservation. This is important, insofar as Burke writes that death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain (36). By foretelling the cataclysmic destruction of the world, and with it mankind, Berlioz calls directly upon the means of primal human response in his listeners to a terrifyingly sublime end. Indeed, whilst we remain in the presence of whatever is supposed to have the power of inflicting [pain, and above all death], it is impossible to be free from terror (59).
The song continues with the sopranos, who repeat their gloomy prophecy while the mens voices enter in counterpoint in chant-like fashion. The voices swell to the movements first climax, only to be suspended by an unexpected chromatic eruption from the orchestra. The orchestras disruption strains the chorus, which begins anew a step higher.
Quantus tremor est futurus, What trembling there will be
Quando judex est venturus when the judge shall come
The orchestras frenzied chromatic run functions to heighten the sense of the sublime that the text evokes by unexpectedly interrupting the chorus in a grand, though sinister flourish. Burke nods to such a reading when he writes, attention is roused by a sudden beginning of sound of any considerable force; and the faculties driven forward, as it were, on their guard. [ .] We have a perception of danger, and our nature rouses us to guard against it (76).
The sopranos sing out more boldly now. Their voices toll humanitys knell while the tenors anxiously punctuate the ensemble with their assertive description of the cataclysm of the Day of Wrath. The chorus attempts to achieve forte, but immediately before a second choral climax the orchestra bursts forth with another tension-building chromatic ascension that displaces and strands the chorus even higher in scale and pitch. When the voices resume, the sopranos continue to sound the funeral bell while the tenors ungracefully flit up and down the minor scale in accented glissandos while revealing why there shall be trembling // when the judge shall come:
Cuncta stricte discussurus! To investigate everything strictly!
Teste David cum Sibylla. As prophesied by David and the Sibyl.
In a fully realized crescendo, the choir begins another swell which the orchestra takes up in preparation for the tuba mirum (the wondrous trumpet). In a final, slightly embellished run that twists itself in an ornamental turn out of a minor and into a major scale, the orchestra yields to Gods brassy summons of humanity to final judgment. Here the trumpet (which in reality is four brass choirs strategically placed around the concert hall calling and responding such that the listener is bombarded by and wholly saturated in the overwhelming fanfare) resounds the apocalyptic call of Kingdom come. Ironically, the wondrous trumpet, despite the doom and gloom it evinces in humanity, breaks from the choirs lachrymose modality and blossoms forth in a majestic, major key.
Even more than the orchestras chromatic negotiation of the choirs doomsday prophecies, the tuba mirum plays on the evocation of the sublime in a pure sonic overpowering of the listeners aural faculties. The relentless and irrevocable call of the wondrous trumpet frames, perhaps, more perfectly (and certainly more boldly) than the choirs words the infinite might of God and the insignificant stature of humanity. The bodys self-preserving techniques are rendered otiose in the face of such indomitable force, such sublimity.
At its apogee, a powerful contingent of timpani girds the call of the wondrous trumpet as the mens voices enter in unison to unequivocally proclaim the trumpets significance:
Tuba mirum spargens sonum The wondrous trumpet, spreading its sound
Per sepulchra regionum through the tombs of every region
Coget omnes ante thronum. will assemble all before the throne.
Quiet settles over the choir and the orchestra as death, that long feared yet fascinating player in mens lives, is defeated. All who once traversed the mortal realm make their way one by one before the throne of God and His humbling judgment:
Cum resurget creatura when all creation rises again
Judicanti responsura. to answer to the judge.
The apocalyptic fanfare of the wondrous trumpet returns in all its frightful glory to signal the judge taking His seat on the throne and the ceremonial proffering of the book of deeds in which all of mans sins and faults have been indelibly inscribed:
Liber scriptus proferetur A book of writing will be brought forth,
In quo totum continetur, in which all will be contained
Unde mundus judicetur. by which the world will be judged.
Judex ergo, cum sedebit Therefore, when the judge is seated,
Quidquid latet, apparebit; whatever is hidden will be exposed;
Nil inultum remanebit. nothing will remain unavenged.
The Dies Irae, which has already boiled over several times in both the orchestra and the wondrous trumpet, slowly settles to a simmer and finally becomes tepid enough such that the choir, in its last hushed and muted tones, incant mens final prophecies and pleas, who, humbly progressing in turn, wait to discover their eternal fate.
The Dies Irae of Berlioz Requiem haunts; its terrifying. Adam Phillips asserts that [t]he Sublime, which always includes something of the terrible, is an important category for Burke because it is such an odd mixture, revealing, as it can, the overlap between pain and pleasure. Because terror, which is the heart of the Sublime, is a passion which, Burke writes, always produces delight when it does not press too close. And it is this that makes artistic representations the tolerable and even thrilling Sublime. This kind of delight, he suggests, in a dubious distinction, is not exactly a pleasure because it turns on pain; delight is produced when the idea of pain and danger is staged, thereby providing sufficient distance. Whatever excites this delight Burke refers to as the Sublime (xxi). While I certainly agree that Berlioz Day of Wrath, and most other composers renditions of the Latin poem, for that matter, invokes the terrible critical to an understanding of the Sublime and simultaneously provides the listener a safe and structured aural environment in which to encounter the terrifying concepts of death, eternity and damnation, I dont believe the effect has to end there, or at the very least, has historically ended there. Phillips continues, [b]ut if the Sublime in art is productive of delight, the Sublime in nature is a form of paralysis, a literally stunning invasion (xxi). Given that the origins of Requiem music are rooted in an era in the Western world in which the return of Christ was seen as not only viable, but in some instances immanent, musical portrayals of Judgment Day were no pretty affair. They placed the specter of death and destruction firmly above the listeners head so that artistic representation and nature/reality uneasily fused. No longer confined to the safe space of the concert hall, cathedral etc., the Dies Irae ceased to be merely terrifying, it arguably began to terrorize in the most sublime manner.