On 5 December 1757, the Prussian army under Frederick II defeated the Austrian troops in the Battle of Leuthen during the Seven Years’ War. The Lower Silesian and now Polish town became the scene of a legend when, on the evening after the battle, over 20,000 soldiers are said to have spontaneously sung the hymn ‘Nun danket alle Gott’. The ‘Choral of Leuthen’ (a German film was produced under this title in 1933) became a patriotic hymn, first in Prussia and then throughout the German Reich.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy chose the chorale as the centrepiece of a symphonic cantata, which later became known as the 2nd Symphony with the title ‘Lobgesang’ and was originally commissioned in 1840 for a festive concert to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the invention of the art of printing by Johannes Gutenberg in Leipzig. In this case, the dissemination of the Luther Bible, which accompanied the historic invention, will certainly have provided the occasion for the Protestant hymn to be played before a large-scale, fugal choral movement euphorically concludes the finale of this symphony. Without any military reference, this ‘Choral von Leuthen’ in connection with Mendelssohn’s ‘Lobgesang’ asserts the character and pathos of a hymn, which, however, never lost its military reference in the course of the 19th century.
Victory celebrations after military battles were often organised in a church setting and decorated with a festive, musical Te Deum. This tradition gave rise to a number of compositions that are now part of the core repertoire of sacred choral music. This reaches deep into the Baroque period of all nations. Even if such a strange custom, which is contradictory because every nation claims God for itself and against others in a dispute, is completely alien to us today, we do not want to do without the music of the Handel works in question any more than we want to do without similar works by Charpentier, for example.
The tradition of spiritual exaltation in Protestant victory celebrations was of course not absent in Prussia either, but it differentiated itself and remained true to the myth of Leuthen for several centuries. Many composers – including Max Reger, Franz Liszt (!) and Sigfried Karg-Elert – practised the inherited tradition and the use of this chorale. It has endured virtually throughout the ages. Even when the general mobilisation was announced on 1 August 1914 on Berlin’s Schlossplatz, crowds enthusiastic about the war sang ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ and Kaiser Wilhelm II called out to the soldiers marching to the front on 11 August 1914: “In any case, should the Lord God give us victory, I pray that the ‘Choral von Leuthen’ will not be missing. Now go forth with God!”
Who would be surprised if Brahms included a chorale arrangement in the second movement of his Triumphlied op. 55 that hints at the chorale ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ but avoids the quotation. The triumphal song in question was composed in 1870 and was particularly inspired by the Battle of Sedan. Brahms completed the composition at the end of February 1871, dedicated the work to Kaiser Wilhelm I and had it premièred in 1872. The text is mainly taken from the Book of Revelation and is surrounded by extensive hallelujah choruses. The patriotic motif behind the creation of this composition is not directly echoed in the extraordinarily masterful and sophisticated double-choir choral writing, nor in the unusually colourful tonal language of the mature composer, who is far from delivering a patriotic-pathetic celebration decoration as a compulsory exercise. Brahms is content with hints of content and leaves the reference to the occasion of his composition clearly in the background, similar to the later ‘Fest- und Ge-denksprüche op. 109′, which were conceived for festivities in memory of great victories of the Prussian army. However, the motif remains undisputedly patriotic, is questionable from our perspective and must rightly be scrutinised historically.
All the black spots in the biographies of the great Romantic musicians – and there are many more of them than is usually assumed – must be addressed. Anyone who ignores problems does not do justice to the historical greatness of an artist. However, as Brahms consciously and clearly withdrew from concrete political events, it is possible to appreciate and enjoy a work musically without denying the context. As naïve as his social view may have been, the actual musical work is characterised by great differentiation. If we visualise the occasion of the work historically, but separate the musical performance from it, it is quite possible to turn the triumphant victory into a birthday serenade that the choir is now able to present to itself. In this way, Brahms’ music loses its original historically immanent, thematic heaviness and gains the masterly light flexibility in the craft of art from which the composer’s musical language actually lives.
Anyone who loves Brahms does not need to do without the uniqueness of his sound world and can reflect on the musician’s unusually rich oeuvre. However, anyone who wants to exaggerate the great representative of German late Romanticism and needs the moral component in harmony for this will fail in the lowlands of the concrete and will also have to cast doubt on the popular symphonic oeuvre, as the link with dishonest motifs cannot ultimately be definitively ruled out even in the non-verbal work at the end.
In contrast, the unsuspicious choral work Nänie op. 82, composed in 1880, may be considered a truly choral symphonic work. It deals with ancient themes and stories that were still present in everyday life for the educated middle classes in the 19th century. It is thus in the tradition of the great oratorio choirs of the last and penultimate centuries, which, thanks to the folk art and folk theatre initiatives at the beginning of the 20th century, opened the doors and gates to the labour movement, which now – albeit initially only for a short time – became part of a broad educational offensive and participation. It is important for us to remember this, because we emerged from the Berlin Volksbühne movement as the Berlin People’s Choir, which has now been called the Berlin Oratorio Choir since 1974 – 50 years ago – and rightly so.
