For the season opening of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, this week and starting Tuesday evening, Rafael Payare associates Rite of Spring by Stravinsky a singular and fascinating work: the Glagolitic mass by Janáček.
“It’s more of an orgy than a mass!” » exclaimed Milan Kundera. There Glagolitic massmore than a Czech work, comes from Moravia, the eastern part of the Czech Republic.
The birthplace of Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), the village of Hukvaldy, is 275 kilometers from that of Mahler, Kaliste, in the center of the country. Between the two, the capital of Moravia: Brno, birthplace of Milan Kundera.
Like Béla Bartók, composer and ethnomusicologist, Leoš Janáček painted sound pictures of his native region, bringing together, in 1898, songs to “revive the influence” of this corner of the country, “from the mountains to the valley”.
Janáček, the man, tells us about his land. The telluric aspect, the roughness, the colors and the sharpness of the accents of his music are an essential part of his art and influence his interpretation.
Old alphabet
There Glagolitic mass is so named because it is written in Old Slavic, or Slavonic, the liturgical language of the Orthodox Church. A derivative of Old Slavonic, called Church Slavonic, in force in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, being also sometimes used by the Eastern Catholic Churches located in Slavic countries, notably in Croatia and among the Catholic Ruthenians, the one of the peoples who formed Czechoslovakia.
Church Slavonic was written in the Glagolitic alphabet (“ glagol » meaning “word”, “speech”). This alphabet, which precedes Cyrillic, was invented by the Byzantine monks Cyril and Methodius in the 9the century. Cyril and Methodius are, according to the Orthodox Church and the Czech and Slovak Catholic Church, the two saints equal to the apostles.
Janáček, who did not like churches (“It’s concentrated death: crypts under the paving, bones under the altars, images of torture and death everywhere. Nothing to do with that,” he said) , had previously, in 1908, abandoned the idea of a Latin mass. The idea of a mass therefore resurfaced in 1921, when the text in Slavonic was given to him. It was in 1926 that Janáček took up the task.
Loyalty to the Nation
As the composer found not only the churches, but also the masses, too sad, he wanted to depict a people who address God in joy. On top of this is grafted another vocation: bright and festive, the Glagolitic mass is also the cry of a people united in a new republic, Czechoslovakia, established in 1918. Janáček intended his Mass for the 10e anniversary of this one.
This “bears loyalty to the Nation on a basis not religious, but moral, which takes God as witness” (according to the composer) was presented for the first time in Brno on December 5, 1927 and repeated in Prague in April 1928 , four months before the composer’s death.
There is therefore no coincidence in using the alphabet of Cyril and Methodius: it is the patriot who speaks, here, as the people speak in their language with their pride, their strength and a belief linked to their land. Because we must distinguish Church and belief, a pantheistic belief, which is based on the miracle of nature, proof of divine power. There Glagolitic massrecognition of men for the miracle of life and an act of faith towards the Czech nation, is therefore logically deployed in a concert hall, not in a church.
The musical result, which reserves a spectacular part for the organ, is incomparable, unique, as is unique the Psalmus Hungaricus of Kodály or, more mystically, the German Requiem by Brahms. There Mass even opens with an orchestral introduction which is a real “call to the people”.
It should be noted in passing that while Janáček is only 13 years younger than Dvořák, he appears very clearly as a musician of the 20the century.
We hope that Rafael Payare will stick to the final score of this work created in 1927 and published after his death, and not to one of the various recent revisions confusing the perspectives by claiming to restore the supposed initial intentions of the composer, but intended above all to extend reproduction rights which fell into the public domain.