Programme note
Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)
L'Enfance du Christ
(The Childhood of Christ) (1853-54)
After the failure of The Damnation of Faust and the heavy debts it left him with, Berlioz had vowed never to risk putting on a big composition in Paris again. The Childhood of Christ was not something he planned. It was as if the work could come into the world only by stealth, almost unawares – beginning with the little chorus of the shepherds’ farewell, jotted down in a friend’s album at the corner of a card-table while his companions played whist, then, a few days later, an overture – the shepherds' gathering at the Bethlehem stable – and a tenor solo describing the Holy Family resting at an oasis during the journey to Egypt, after which the score was put on one side and seemingly forgotten.
Not till three years later, in 1853, did The Flight into Egypt get a performance, conducted by the composer, in Leipzig. It was such a success that he was urged to enlarge it, and The Arrival at Saïs was soon written, followed by the first part of the triptych, Herod’s Dream.
Berlioz knew he could be sure of a sympathetic reception in Germany. But it was in Paris after all that his "sacred trilogy" had its enormously successful first performances. Paris could hardly believe its ears. Here was the apostle of noise, the master of the macabre and the grotesque, writing for a handful of instruments and a small chorus to the manner born: in Part 2 a chamber orchestra of strings and six wind, without bassoons or horns; Part 3 using only slightly larger forces; and even Part 1, in which trombones appeared, sparingly scored, and drums heard only twice, very briefly. Berlioz had obviously changed.
In fact he hadn’t. All that had changed was the subject – which, in his words, "naturally prompted a naïve and gentle kind of music". His ideal was still what he called "passionate expression, that is, expression bent on reproducing the essence of its subject, even when it is the opposite of 'passion', and tender feelings are being expressed or the most profound calm".
In The Childhood of Christ, Berlioz remains the dramatist he always was. The work is conceived as a series of tableaux in which we are shown the human elements of the story: the uneasy might of Rome, the world-weariness of Herod, the fanaticism of the soothsayers, the joys and fears of Jesus’ parents, the shepherds’ friendliness and the busy welcome of the Ishmaelite household. They are juxtaposed in a way that anticipates the cinema. An example is the transition from Herod’s rage to the peace of the stable. We see in angry close-up the fear-distorted faces of Herod and the soothsayers, like faces in a Bosch or
Brueghel crucifixion. Then the nightmare fades, the picture dwindles and the manger comes into focus. In the epilogue it is as though the glowing family circle were growing faint and blurring before our eyes. The moment has come to close the book and draw the timeless moral; and the composer, having shown the loving kindness of his good Samaritans, tracks away from the scene, causes the picture to fade by means of a series of quiet, still unisons, surrounded by silence. Its purpose is to separate us from what we have been witnessing, to make it recede across the centuries and return to the ancient past from which it has been evoked, and achieve the necessary transition to the final meditation on the meaning of the Christmas drama.
Everything is visualised. When the Holy Family reach Egypt hungry and exhausted and beg in vain for shelter, the musical imagery brings the scene before us. The plaintive viola motif, the wailing oboe and cor anglais, the fragmentary violin phrases, the tremor of cellos and basses, Mary’s panting utterances, Joseph’s swaying melody constantly returning, Gluck-like, on itself, the tap of the drums as he timidly knocks, the shouts of "Get away, dirty Jews" which brusquely interrupt the prevailing triple metre – all this makes a vivid and poignant ‘expression of the subject’. Nor is it only the refugees’ sufferings that arouse the composer’s compassion. He illuminates the loneliness of the tormented Herod and the forlornness of the soothsayers, whose gloomy choruses and weird cabbalistic dance express the sense that superstition is at once sinister and ridiculous, to be pitied.
By the time he composed the work Berlioz had long ceased to be a Christian. But in recalling his childhood for the memoirs he was writing he relived the beliefs that had once been central to his life. Composing the work also took him back to the sources of his artistic being, to the folk music and noels on which his style had been founded. The archaic flavour that permeates much of the score came quite naturally to him. And the intensity of recollected emotion was such that he could re-enter a world where the events and characters of the Christmas story, as they stamped themselves on a hyper-sensitive child, were once again vibrantly alive.
No sentimental recovery of belief is involved. His mind remains sceptical. But his imagination believes. He remembers what it was like to have faith. And at the end, having re-enacted the age-old myth, and stepped out of the magic circle again, he can only pay tribute to the power of the Christian message and, unbeliever as he is, bow before the mystery of Christ’s birth and death.
Synopsis
Part 1: Herod’s Dream
The narrator sets the scene: Palestine shortly after Christ’s birth, and the hopes and fears already in the air. A Roman detachment patrols the empty streets of Jerusalem. Their night march is briefly interrupted as two soldiers discuss the strange terrors of King Herod. Alone, unable to sleep, Herod reflects on the solitariness of his life and on the dream that haunts him, of a child who will overthrow his power. He learns from his soothsayers that his throne will be safe only if all the children lately born in his kingdom are put to death. The scene moves to the stable in Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph are warned by angels of the danger to Jesus, and are told to leave at once and travel across the desert to Egypt.
Part 2: The Flight into Egypt
Shepherds gather at the stable. They say goodbye to the Holy Family. The narrator describes Mary, Joseph, the baby and the donkey resting at an oasis, watched over by angels.
Part 3: The Arrival at Saïs
The narrator tells how, after great hardships, the travellers reach the city of Saïs. They knock at many doors but are driven away. At last, half fainting with hunger, they are hospitably received by an Ishmaelite. Like Joseph he is a carpenter, and he invites them to stay and live with him and his family. The grateful pilgrims take their rest, entertained with music by the children, and then retire to bed. In an epilogue the narrator tells of their long sojourn in Egypt, their return to Palestine, and the child’s fulfilment of his redeeming mission. Narrator and chorus pray for humanity’s pride to be abased before such a mystery and its heart to be filled with Christ’s love.
© David Cairns
