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Tuesday, April 30, 2024


Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht


There is something sinister about the Canadian Tax system. It is declared that we must file taxes by Midnight April 30. This is Walpurgisnacht, or night of the witches, the ancient pagan festival of fire; Beltane, and consumption of the last of the salted meat from harvest in celebration of the new life of spring.

Death and Taxes as they say. Leads to rebirth new life.

Walpurgisnacht,night of the witches the celebration of the end of darkness and the fire rituals of spring. We pays our taxes and hopes we gets some back from the tax man. A sacrifice, even if it is in coin, as the season demands.

Goethe and Mendelssohn express this Euroean pagan tradition in verse and song.
Mendelssohn's Choral arrangement is a modernist paenan to paganism. But damn we still must give unto Caesar; the real meaning of the festival of fools........

Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht
Conductor : 
Valérie Fayet
Walpurgis Night, based on a work by Goethe, celebrates the popular tradition which talks about pagan gatherings taking place on the “witches' mountain” during the night of May 1 st.
Mendelssohn's work is admirably clear, colourful and full of energy.

Die erste Walpurgisnacht Op. 60: So weit gebracht, dass wir bei Nacht
Listen
Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, cantata for chorus & orchestra, Op. 60 So weit gebracht, daß wir bei Nacht
Composed by Felix Mendelssohn
Performed by Chamber Orchestra Europe
Conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt

A period of travel and concert-giving introduced Mendelssohn to England, Scotland (1829) and Italy (1830-31); after return visits to Paris (1831) and London (1832, 1833) he took up a conducting post at Düsseldorf (1833-5), concentrating on Handel's oratorios. Among the chief products of this time were The Hebrides (first performed in London, 1832), the g Minor Piano Concerto, Die erste Walpurgisnacht, the Italian Symphony (1833, London)

5. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: Ouverture: 1. Das schlechte 2. Der Ubergang zum Fruhling -
6. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: I Es lacht der Mai! -
7. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: II Konnt ihr so verwegen handeln? -
8. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: III Wer Opfer heut' zu bringen scheut -
9. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: IV Verteilt euch hier -
10. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: V Diese dumpfen Pfaffenchristen - Kommt mit Zacken und mit Gabeln -
11. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: VII So weit gebracht - VIII Hilf, ach hilf mir, Kriegsgeselle - IX Die Flamme reinigt sich vom Rauch -
O+1+2.nwc:0: Overture
:1: Now may again
:2: Know ye not a deed so daring?
3+4.nwc :3: The man who flies
:4: Disperse, ye gallant men
5+6+7+8+9.nwc:5: Should our Christian foes assail us
:6: Come with torches brightly flashing
:7: Restrain'd by might
:8: Help, my comrades
:9: Unclouded now, the flame is bright


"...don't you think this could become a new kind of cantata?" Rituality, Authenticity and Staging in Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht

Assuming a potential analogy between art and ritual, or between art and the interpretation of ritual as a Gesamtkunstwerk, 
the question arises as to what degree boundaries or transitions between aesthetic presentation, staging and identification with ritual can be determined in art. This topic could be discussed in terms of reception-aesthetics, with the question of the participation of an implicit or exclusive audience in ritual or in art. On the other hand, the perspective of this question can also be developed, as in this article, in terms of production-aesthetics, using the model of a musical composition based on a preexisting literary text. In Goethe's and Mendelssohn's texts,' not only their cultic-religious rituality will be investigated, but also the problem of how far beyond the cultic subject the immanent formative principles of ritual in terms of music are effective. Although in his early ballad Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night) of 1799 Goethe distinguished the pagan Walpurgis night from the classical and romantic in both stages of Faust, in his own way Mendelssohn related these three forms of ritual directly to one another within one work.

Cantata - LoveToKnow 1911

In modern times the term cantata is applied almost exclusively to choral, as distinguished from solo vocal music. There has, perhaps, been only one kind of cantata since Bach which can be recognized as an art form and not as a mere title for works otherwise impossible to classify. It is just possible to recognize as a distinct artistic type that kind of early r9th-century cantata in which the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than the oratorio style, though at the same time not exclude ing the possibility of a brilliant climax in the shape of a light order of fugue. Beethoven's Glorreiche Augenblick is a brilliant "pot-boiler" in this style; Weber's Jubel Cantata is a typical specimen, and Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht is the classic.

The Jews seem fated to wanDer forever among other nations and be faced perpetually with minority status and a legitimate pressure to acculturate and assimilate. If one compares the ending of The Eternal Road to Felix Mendelssohn's setting of Goethe's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, one is struck by a vital difference. Mendelssohn, although bearing the most celebrated name in early nineteenth-century German-Jewish history, had been converted and become a devout Protestant. Nevertheless through his music he celebrated with empathy and pride the courageous resistance of the Druids to the siege on their traditions and beliefs laid by violent Christian attackers. In contrast, The Eternal Road ends much more ambiguously with a vague hope for a return to Zion among a defeated and divided community, bowing to a fate of perpetual exclusion, persecution, and powerlessness.


Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night

The Heathen Muse in European Culture, 1700-1850
John Michael Cooper


Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night is a book about tolerance and acceptance in the face of cultural, political, and religious strife. Its point of departure is the Walpurgis Night. The Night, also known as Beltane or May Eve, was supposedly an annual witches' Sabbath that centered around the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains.
After exploring how a notoriously pagan celebration came to be named after the Christian missionary St. Walpurgis (ca. 710-79), John Michael Cooper discusses the Night's treatments in several closely interwoven works by Goethe and Mendelssohn. His book situates those works in their immediate personal and professional contexts, as well as among treatments by a wide array of other artists, philosophers, and political thinkers, including Voltaire, Lessing, Shelley, Heine, Delacroix, and Berlioz.
In an age of decisive political and religious conflict, Walpurgis Night became a heathen muse: a source of spiritual inspiration that was neither specifically Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim. And Mendelssohn's and Goethe's engagements with it offer new insights into its role in European cultural history, as well as into issues of political, religious, and social identity -- and the relations between cultural groups -- in today's world.


Among some of his (Goethe’s) most engaging/compelling musical experiences of his late maturity were the visits of Felix Mendelssohn, who was 12 years old in 1821 and had been introduced to Goethe personally in Weimar by his (Mendelssohn’s) teacher, Zelter. Further visits took place in 1822, 1825, and 1830. Goethe had Mendelssohn play for him and explain to him technical matters concerning music and music history. This relationship became one of tender devotion on the part of Goethe towards Mendelssohn: in 1822 Goethe said to Mendelssohn: “I am Saul and you are my David,” and in his last letter to Mendelssohn, Goethe began with “My dear son.” Mendelssohn dedicated his Piano Quartet in B minor, opus 3 to Goethe and composed music for “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” (1st version in 1832)…. Goethe was eager to hear instrumental music which was played by Reichardt, Kayser, Zelter, Eberwein, Hummel, Spohr, Beethoven, Baron Oliva, Szymanowska (female pianist), J. H. F. Schütz, and finally by Mendelssohn whom he repeatedly asked to play something for him.”]


Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, one of his greatest cantatas, was based on Goethe's Faust, and on Goethe's personal interpretation of the scene (Grove Dictionary 146). Mendelssohn's friendship with the poet lasted for a great many years, up until Goethe's death in 1832.

The first Walpurgisnacht

The Ouverture represents the transition from the winter to spring. The beginning in A-Moll is overwritten with “the bad weather”, while with the idiom into the Dur variant approaching the Walpurgisnacht in spring is announced. It is described in the following, as the priests and Druiden of the Celts meet secretly in the inhospitable mountains of the resin, in order to address after old custom with fire their prayer to the all father of the sky and the earth. Since their rites are forbidden by the Christian gentlemen however, everything must happen in the secret one. With cheat and to linings the soldiers of the Christians were frightened in such a manner that the Celts in peace can celebrate their Walpurgisnacht.
There are two Walpurgisnächte in Goethe's work. Admits is above all that from that fist I, in which a typical Hexensabbat is sworn to in visionär grotesque way. On the other hand Goethe takes poem the first Walpurgisnacht a heidnisches victim celebration developed to 1799 in that during thunderstorm eight to the cause to confront two incompatible ways of thinking and being LV each other.
Whole 19. Through century the romantic composers let themselves fist be inspired again and again from the picture world of the I and fist II, while the first Walpurgisnacht remained almost unknown. Only Carl Friedrich Zelter, Goethe friend and musical advisor, have try, the poem tone. It kept full fifteen years it under its papers, before it took distance finally from a project, which exceeded its imagination.
That was introduced by Zelter at that time twelve-year-old boy Mendelssohn with around sixty years the older Olympier Goethe, whom time and fame had coined/shaped. By Beethoven and Schubert to judge, understood the old gentleman not much about music. In its youth he had heard some of the Mozarts' works, whose clarity and harmony it zollte still at the age attention and acknowledgment; and it found favours to feel with the citizen of Berlin miracle child from good family the aftereffect of those melodies in those the ideal of its own youth lived. It would be inaccurate to speak of a co-operation between Goethe and Mendelssohn. The first important piece, to which the poet energized the young musician, was the Ouvertüre sea silence and lucky travel, which arrived only in the year 1832, Goethe's death year, at the public performance. That Goethe would have known to appreciate a music, so clearly under Beethovens the influence is to be doubted. Just as little it the score of the first Walpurgisnacht would have probably behagt. The work, in which orchestras and voices verwoben closely into one another are, becomes not completely fair the central thought of the artist Philosphen. From its “Faible for witches” seduced, Mendelssohn stated little interest in the deeper meaning of the poem: the always-lasting conflict between the instinktiven natural forces on the one hand and the mental clarity of a thought world coined/shaped by the clearing-up on the other hand. With the primarily romantic treatment of the article it remains on the level of a descriptive poem and tears us in tumbles uncontrolled thunderstorm eight.
The 1831 completed first minute of the score experienced substantial changes, before she arrived to 1842 at the premiere. Goethe did not experience no more, which regulation to his verses assign became, whose Vertonung lends a fascinating juvenile fire to them. Mendelssohn proves here as genuine romantics. It uses a pallet of magnificent tone qualities, lets the horns from the supple fabric of the Streicher step out and gives to the Holzbläsern a most personal note. The choirs are from a Schlichtheit, which lends occasionally the serious character of a Volksliedes to them, while proper large airs are assigned to the soloist.
The whole wealth of the romantic opera is united in this musical illustration of a poem, which reminds at the Feenzauber of shakespearscher scenes. The choir of the Druiden (No. 6 of the score) is from an imaginativeness, which only the late Verdi in the last act of its Falstaff reaches again. The composer, at whom Goethe estimated the causing its own youth, somehow not completely up-to-date one, appears here surprisingly as one of the prophets of the music 19. Century. With deciveness it secures the transition from Beethoven to the large rhapsodies of Brahms.
Jean Francois Labie
(Translation: Ingrid trusting man)


G O E T H E ' S   P A G A N   P O E T R Y

Goethe, a genius with unmistakable Pagan sympathies,
excelled as a poet, dramatist, novelist, essayist,
philosopher and scientist (his works occupy 140
volumes!). Here are several of his Pagan poems,
including his ballade "The First Walpurgis-Night," in
which the Pagans score a Discordian victory over their
oppressors. (I'm sure Goethe now dwells happily among
the Pagan Gods.) The ballade has been set to music by
Mendelssohn (Die Erste Walpurgisnacht), which is quite
good, but not suitable for small group performance.
Perhaps the Muses will help some modern Pagan to
compose a version for contemporary witches' sabbats.
Although only the God (Allvater) is mentioned, I've
left Goethe's text unchanged; it's easy to substitute
"Mother" for some or all of the "Father"s if you like.
-- John Opsopaus


THE FIRST WALPURGIS-NIGHT
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A DRUID.

Sweet smiles the May!
The forest gay
From frost and ice is freed;
No snow is found,
Glad songs resound
Across the verdant mead.
Upon the height
The snow lies light,
Yet thither now we go,
There to extol our Father's name,
Whom we for ages know.
Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;
Thus pure the heart will grow.

THE DRUIDS.

Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;
Extol we now our Father's name,
Whom we for ages know!
Up, up, then, let us go!

ONE OF THE PEOPLE.

Would ye, then, so rashly act?
Would ye instant death attract?
Know ye not the cruel threats
Of the victors we obey?
Round about are placed their nets
In the sinful Heathen's way.
Ah! upon the lofty wall
Wife and children slaughter they;
And we all
Hasten to a certain fall.

CHORUS OF WOMEN.

Ay, upon the camp's high wall
All our children loved they slay.
Ah, what cruel victors they!
And we all
Hasten to a certain fall.

A DRUID.

Who fears to-day
His rites to pay,
Deserves his chains to wear.
The forest's free!
This wood take we,
And straight a pile prepare!
Yet in the wood
To stay 'tis good
By day till all is still,
With watchers all around us placed
Protecting you from ill.
With courage fresh, then, let us haste
Our duties to fulfil.

CHORUS OF WATCHERS.

Ye valiant watchers now divide
Your numbers through the forest wide,
And see that all is still,
While they their rites fulfil.

A WATCHER.

Let us in a cunning wise,
Yon dull Christian priests surprise!
With the devil of their talk
We'll those very priests confound.
Come with prong and come with fork,
Raise a wild and rattling sound
Through the livelong night, and prowl
All the rocky passes round.
Screech-owl, owl,
Join in chorus with our howl!

CHORUS OF WATCHERS.

Come with prong, and come with fork,
Like the devil of their talk,
And with wildly rattling sound,
Prowl the desert rocks around!
Screech owl, owl,
Join in chorus with our howl!

A DRUID.

This far 'tis right,
That we by night
Our Father's praises sing;
Yet when 'tis day,
To Thee we may
A heart unsullied bring.
'Tis true that now,
And often, Thou
Favorest the foe in fight.
As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our olden ways,
Who e'er can crush Thy light?

A CHRISTIAN WATCHER.

Comrades, quick! your aid afford!
All the brood of hell's abroad:
See how their enchanted forms
Through and through with flames are glowing!
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms,
On in quick succession going!
Let us, let us haste to fly!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing,
And the arch fiend roars on high;
From the ground
Hellish vapors rise around.

CHORUS OF CHRISTIAN WATCHERS.

Terrible enchanted forms,
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing!
See, the arch fiend comes, all-glowing!
From the ground
Hellish vapors rise around.

CHORUS OF DRUIDS

As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our olden ways,
Whoe'er can crush Thy light?

[Bowring translation]


THE CONSECRATED SPOT

When in the dance of the Nymphs, in the
moonlight so holy assembled,
Mingle the Graces, down from Olympus in secret
descending,
Here doth the minstrel hide, and list to their
numbers enthralling,
Here doth he watch their silent dances'
mysterious measure.
[tr. Bowring]


[All selections from "The Poems of Goethe," New York:
John D. Williams, 1882.]

finis


The Romantic Mendelssohn: The Composition of Die erste Walpurgisnacht

THE FAUST LEGEND IN MUSIC


Monday, April 30, 2007




Sunday, April 30, 2023


A witch in the family

Karin Helmstaedt, DW

For Walpurgis Night, the April 30 feast associated with witchcraft in German folklore, DW's Karin Helmstaedt looked into the tragic story of her ancestor who was burned as a witch in Winningen.


I remember the day I learned we had a witch in the family. I walked with my parents up a leafy hillside overlooking Winningen, a picturesque wine-making town on the banks of Germany's Moselle River. It was a pilgrimage to the top of the "Hexenhügel," or Witches' Hill, where a sombre obelisk commemorates 21 people who died as a result of the Winningen Witch Trials.

For a Canadian kid just discovering Europe, it was quite a revelation. My mind was instantly filled with horrifying images. I ran my finger over the rough engraving of my 9th great-grandmother's name: Margarethe Kröber. She had died over 300 years earlier, burned as a witch in November 1642.

Decades later, I was still haunted by her story and tried to find out more.

"Her case is particularly tragic," historian Walter Rummel told me. The hands-down expert on the topic in Winningen says the area was unique for the fact that its extensive witch trial records — over 8,000 pages worth — were not only highly detailed but also extraordinarily well preserved. Cross-referenced with tax records, church and commercial registers, they offered a window into how the townspeople reacted to the threat of alleged witches in their midst — and how some knew to use the situation to their advantage.

A complex chapter

The European Witch Hunts represent a complicated chapter, and by its very nature misconceptions abound.


Add literature, radical feminist politics and the rise of Neo-Pagan religious movements like Wicca into the mix — and things get even murkier. From the Brothers Grimm to the Wizard of Oz, mythology surrounding the figure of the witch has been crystallized into our cultural subconscious.
In the Brothers Grimm fairytale, Hansel and Gretel are captured by a witch living in the forest

But beyond the imagery we often see as historical fact — for instance, that witches were burned at the stake in the Middle Ages, that midwives or red-haired women were most likely to be targeted, or that witch hunts were an instrument of the patriarchal Church to keep women down — things were far more complex. Early modern Europe saw a collusion of circumstances — social, political, religious and climactic — that set the stage for three centuries of witch hunts.

Wolfgang Behringer, an expert on early modern history, researched this tumultuous period and found that the major waves of witch hunts in Europe were linked with a noticeable climatic deterioration now referred to as the Little Ice Age (1306-1860), when a prevalence of epidemics and natural disasters meant European populations were massively stressed — and looking for explanations.

"If we assume that failed harvests played a big role in the desire for witch hunts, then we find that most of them are not initiated by the State or the Church, but rather by the populace," said Behringer, who describes with hunts as a "form of protest" initiated by citizens.

Witch hunts had less to do with religion and more to do with forms of settlement, added Behringer: "There are practically no witch hunts in nomadic societies, or if a population is sparse. The village structure where people sit on top of each other, watch each other and get suspicious if any misfortune occurs, is (a more likely scenario for witch hunts) as so often witch trials are about subsistence."

According to Rita Voltmer, historian and author of "Hexen" (2008), the figure of the witch was repeatedly instrumentalized — and romanticized — by early feminists like Matilda Joslyn Gage and even by Nazi propagandists to bolster the argument that the Catholic Church was the main driver of witch hunts.

"They were all part of this movement that took up the idea of the wise woman priestess — sometimes of Celtic origin, sometimes of Germanic origin — and that the blond and red-haired women, our forefathers and mothers, were deliberately persecuted by the Jewish-influenced Christian Church that was out to destroy the true Germanic race," she said.

DW's Karin Helstaedt returned to Winningen to find out more about her ancestor's fate
Image: Karin Helmstaedt/DW

A lethal mix in Germany

Currently experts agree that some 50-60,000 people died between 1450 and 1789 in Europe as a result of witch hunts. And while there were "hot spots" in many countries, it's a grim fact that roughly half — or 25,000 — were killed within the boundaries of present-day Germany.

Nearly 80% of the victims were women, but there were stark regional variations and in places like Iceland, Russia, or the province of Normandy, the vast majority of those accused of witchcraft or sorcery were men.

In Germany, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, the persecution of witches had a legal basis, thanks to the "Peinliche Gerichtsordnung" enacted by Emperor Charles V in 1532. This early penal code, also known as the "Carolina," counted sorcery as a serious crime.

From then on witch trials across the Empire could supposedly be conducted in the name of law and order, but divided as it was into countless entities, and coupled with religious pressure and conflicts in the wake of the Reformation, Germany's social fabric made for a particularly lethal mix.
Extract from the indictment of Margarethe Kröber, 1642
Image: Karin Helmstaedt/DW
Anatomy of a witch trial

Which brings us back to Winningen. Of the 24 people accused there of witchcraft, 19 were executed, two died in prison, and the remaining three managed to fight their case and be acquitted.

My ancestor Margarethe came from a well-situated family. She married Zacharias Kröber, a judge, so together they belonged to the town's social elite. Written records indicate that she had a rebellious nature. She had been married eight years and had two small boys when she was officially denounced for being a witch.

And it turns out she wasn't the only one in the family to die on the Witches' Hill. Margarethe's own mother was in fact the first person in Winningen to be executed for witchcraft. Subsequently her aunt, her cousin and, as time went on, all her sisters and brother-in law met the same fate.
Winningen's 'Hexenstein' commemorates the victims of Witch Trials in the 17th century, including Margarethe Kröber
Image: Karin Helmstaedt/DW

A clear case of the the upper crust being a target of witch hunts, which was typical for this area, but even Walter Rummel agrees the systematic destruction of an entire generation of Kröber spouses is exceptional. "Witchcraft was an accusation that couldn't be topped," he said, "and like a reactor, it irradiated everyone and everything around it."

Through the witch trial protocols, all in ornate 17th-century script, I learned that she was accused of a long list of charges, including attending a Witches' Sabbath, flying and poisoning people.

Margarethe had thumbed her nose at any rumors surrounding her for years, but was eventually arrested, strip searched, shaved and interrogated. She denied all the charges against her, and called on her husband to vouch for her innocence.

But in a heartbreaking turn of events — and ostensibly to protect his position in the town — Zacharias left her in the lurch, claiming that if she was a devout Christian, her body would withstand the torture, and that at any rate, she should simply confess "because you know you're a witch."

The cruelty of Europe's witch trials

An estimated three million witch trials took place between 1450 to 1750. Around 60,000 people met gruesome deaths.Image: Imago Images/United Archives International
Thousands of deaths at the stake


A leaflet in 1555 reports "a shocking scene" and shows the burning of alleged witches in Derenburg. It occurred during the peak of Europe's witch-hunting madness, which took place from 1450 to 1750. Interestingly, it was not way back in the Middle Ages, but rather in modern times that witch hunting reached its peak. In Germany, tens of thousands of "witches" were burned alive.Image: picture-alliance/dpa

9 images


To extract her "confession," the Witch Commission then resorted to torture, using crushing devices such as the so-called "boot," and submitting her to "reverse hanging."

At this point the trial records are excruciating to read. Her screams and suffering — "clamat et torturam" — were duly recorded. Tragically, her only way out of the torment was to lie — a mortal sin from a devout 17th-century perspective.

After two days of agony, she confessed to being a witch, effectively sealing her own death sentence. She was also forced to denounce another woman for witchcraft, ensuring the cycle of witch hunts could continue.

Two days later she was hauled up to the execution site and forced to beg forgiveness from the townspeople who had gathered to witness her execution. Thus exonerated, she was granted a "merciful" death by beheading before her body was burned.

The final anomaly came next in the form of a feeding frenzy: According to records, 250 liters of wine were carted up to the execution site — ensuring the whole town was complicit, while the caterers made a killing. Margarethe's husband was handed the bill.
Karin Helmstaedt and historian Walter Rummel studying the witch trial records at the Koblenz state Archives
Image: Manja Wolff

In short, power, money, envy and resentment were behind the witch trials which, in Winningen, were always directed at society's upper echelons.

The last witch trial in Winningen in 1659 did not end in execution, as families mobilized resources to fight for their alleged witches' cause. It was the beginning of the end — as people simply doubted so many could be guilty of witchcraft.

Witch hunting hysteria in Europe began to die down as key laws were changed. The age of Enlightenment meant science and reason took precedence over superstition. Food was more plentiful, and the advent of insurance meant people were less prone to disaster.

The last alleged witch in Europe was beheaded in Switzerland in 1782 — marking the end of a dark chapter in European history.

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier

 



Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Worth Reprinting

April 30 is Walpurgis Nacht; Night of the Witches which corresponds to Samhain; Halloween, October 31 as both days herald a major year changing festival.

Walpurgis heralds May Day, Samhain heralds All Saints Day.

They are opposite ends of the season. One is spring planting and the other is fall harvest.

And of course April 30 is the time the devil asks for his due; 

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht



LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MAYDAY 

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE, CONWAY 1879

Newly Designed Front Cover.

Original Title Page.
[Contents]

Preface.

Three Friars, says a legend, hid themselves near the Witch Sabbath orgies that they might count the devils; but the Chief of these, discovering the friars, said—‘Reverend Brothers, our army is such that if all the Alps, their rocks and glaciers, were equally divided among us, none would have a pound’s weight.’ This was in one Alpine valley. Any one who has caught but a glimpse of the world’s Walpurgis Night, as revealed in Mythology and Folklore, must agree that this courteous devil did not overstate the case. Any attempt to catalogue the evil spectres which have haunted mankind were like trying to count the shadows cast upon the earth by the rising sun. This conviction has grown upon the author of this work at every step in his studies of the subject.
In 1859 I contributed, as one of the American ‘Tracts for the Times,’ a pamphlet entitled ‘The Natural History of the Devil.’ Probably the chief value of that essay was to myself, and this in that its preparation had revealed to me how pregnant with interest and importance was the subject selected. Subsequent researches in the same direction, after I had come to reside in Europe, revealed how slight had been my conception of the vastness of the domain upon which that early venture was made. In 1872, while preparing a series of lectures for the Royal [vi]Institution on Demonology, it appeared to me that the best I could do was to print those lectures with some notes and additions; but after they were delivered there still remained with me unused the greater part of materials collected in many countries, and the phantasmal creatures which I had evoked would not permit me to rest from my labours until I had dealt with them more thoroughly.
The fable of Thor’s attempt to drink up a small spring, and his failure because it was fed by the ocean, seems aimed at such efforts as mine. But there is another aspect of the case which has yielded me more encouragement. These phantom hosts, however unmanageable as to number, when closely examined, present comparatively few types; they coalesce by hundreds; from being at first overwhelmed by their multiplicity, the classifier finds himself at length beating bushes to start a new variety. Around some single form—the physiognomy, it may be, of Hunger or Disease, of Lust or Cruelty—ignorant imagination has broken up nature into innumerable bits which, like mirrors of various surface, reflect the same in endless sizes and distortions; but they vanish if that central fact be withdrawn.
In trying to conquer, as it were, these imaginary monsters, they have sometimes swarmed and gibbered around me in a mad comedy which travestied their tragic sway over those who believed in their reality. Gargoyles extended their grin over the finest architecture, cornices coiled to serpents, the very words of speakers started out of their conventional sense into images that tripped my attention. Only as what I believed right solutions were given to their problems were my sphinxes laid; but through this psychological experience it [vii]appeared that when one was so laid his or her legion disappeared also. Long ago such phantasms ceased to haunt my nerves, because I discovered their unreality; I am now venturing to believe that their mythologic forms cease to haunt my studies, because I have found out their reality.
Why slay the slain? Such may be the question that will arise in the minds of many who see this book. A Scotch song says, ‘The Devil is dead, and buried at Kirkcaldy;’ if so, he did not die until he had created a world in his image. The natural world is overlaid by an unnatural religion, breeding bitterness around simplest thoughts, obstructions to science, estrangements not more reasonable than if they resulted from varying notions of lunar figures,—all derived from the Devil-bequeathed dogma that certain beliefs and disbeliefs are of infernal instigation. Dogmas moulded in a fossil demonology make the foundation of institutions which divert wealth, learning, enterprise, to fictitious ends. It has not, therefore, been mere intellectual curiosity which has kept me working at this subject these many years, but an increasing conviction that the sequelæ of such superstitions are exercising a still formidable influence. When Father Delaporte lately published his book on the Devil, his Bishop wrote—‘Reverend Father, if every one busied himself with the Devil as you do, the kingdom of God would gain by it.’ Identifying the kingdom here spoken of as that of Truth, it has been with a certain concurrence in the Bishop’s sentiment that I have busied myself with the work now given to the public.


https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40686/40686-h/40686-h.htm

Tuesday, May 07, 2019


Photos of the Week:

Women dressed as witches dance in front of a fire during Walpurgis Night in Erfurt, Germany, on April 30, 2019. Costumed devils and witches meet to celebrate Walpurgis Night, a traditional religious holiday of pre-Christian origins. The event is named after Saint Walburga, an English nun who helped convert the Germans to Christianity in the 8th century.


Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Worth Reprinting

April 30 is Walpurgis Nacht; Night of the Witches which corresponds to Samhain; Halloween, October 31 as both days herald a major year changing festival.

Walpurgis heralds May Day, Samhain heralds All Saints Day.

They are opposite ends of the season. One is spring planting and the other is fall harvest.

And of course April 30 is the time the devil asks for his due; (from my blog post last year.)

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht


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Monday, April 30, 2007

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht


There is something sinister about the Canadian Tax system. It is declared that we must file taxes by Midnight April 30. This is Walpurgisnacht, or night of the witches, the ancient pagan festival of fire; Beltane, and consumption of the last of the salted meat from harvest in celebration of the new life of spring.

Death and Taxes as they say. Leads to rebirth new life.

Walpurgisnacht,night of the witches the celebration of the end of darkness and the fire rituals of spring. We pays our taxes and hopes we gets some back from the tax man. A sacrifice, even if it is in coin, as the season demands.

Goethe and Mendelssohn express this Euroean pagan tradition in verse and song.
Mendelssohn's Choral arrangement is a modernist paenan to paganism. But damn we still must give unto Caesar; the real meaning of the festival of fools........

Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht
Conductor :
Valérie Fayet
Walpurgis Night, based on a work by Goethe, celebrates the popular tradition which talks about pagan gatherings taking place on the “witches' mountain” during the night of May 1 st.
Mendelssohn's work is admirably clear, colourful and full of energy.

Die erste Walpurgisnacht Op. 60: So weit gebracht, dass wir bei Nacht
Listen
Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, cantata for chorus & orchestra, Op. 60 So weit gebracht, daß wir bei Nacht
Composed by Felix Mendelssohn
Performed by Chamber Orchestra Europe
Conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt

A period of travel and concert-giving introduced Mendelssohn to England, Scotland (1829) and Italy (1830-31); after return visits to Paris (1831) and London (1832, 1833) he took up a conducting post at Düsseldorf (1833-5), concentrating on Handel's oratorios. Among the chief products of this time were The Hebrides (first performed in London, 1832), the g Minor Piano Concerto, Die erste Walpurgisnacht, the Italian Symphony (1833, London)


6533 Mendelssohn: Walpurgisnacht

5. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: Ouverture: 1. Das schlechte 2. Der Ubergang zum Fruhling -
6. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: I Es lacht der Mai! -
7. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: II Konnt ihr so verwegen handeln? -
8. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: III Wer Opfer heut' zu bringen scheut -
9. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: IV Verteilt euch hier -
10. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: V Diese dumpfen Pfaffenchristen - Kommt mit Zacken und mit Gabeln -
11. Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: VII So weit gebracht - VIII Hilf, ach hilf mir, Kriegsgeselle - IX Die Flamme reinigt sich vom Rauch -
O+1+2.nwc:0: Overture
:1: Now may again
:2: Know ye not a deed so daring?
3+4.nwc :3: The man who flies
:4: Disperse, ye gallant men
5+6+7+8+9.nwc:5: Should our Christian foes assail us
:6: Come with torches brightly flashing
:7: Restrain'd by might
:8: Help, my comrades
:9: Unclouded now, the flame is bright


"...don't you think this could become a new kind of cantata?" Rituality, Authenticity and Staging in Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht

Assuming a potential analogy between art and ritual, or between art and the interpretation of ritual as a Gesamtkunstwerk,
the question arises as to what degree boundaries or transitions between aesthetic presentation, staging and identification with ritual can be determined in art. This topic could be discussed in terms of reception-aesthetics, with the question of the participation of an implicit or exclusive audience in ritual or in art. On the other hand, the perspective of this question can also be developed, as in this article, in terms of production-aesthetics, using the model of a musical composition based on a preexisting literary text. In Goethe's and Mendelssohn's texts,' not only their cultic-religious rituality will be investigated, but also the problem of how far beyond the cultic subject the immanent formative principles of ritual in terms of music are effective. Although in his early ballad Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night) of 1799 Goethe distinguished the pagan Walpurgis night from the classical and romantic in both stages of Faust, in his own way Mendelssohn related these three forms of ritual directly to one another within one work.

Cantata - LoveToKnow 1911

In modern times the term cantata is applied almost exclusively to choral, as distinguished from solo vocal music. There has, perhaps, been only one kind of cantata since Bach which can be recognized as an art form and not as a mere title for works otherwise impossible to classify. It is just possible to recognize as a distinct artistic type that kind of early r9th-century cantata in which the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than the oratorio style, though at the same time not exclude ing the possibility of a brilliant climax in the shape of a light order of fugue. Beethoven's Glorreiche Augenblick is a brilliant "pot-boiler" in this style; Weber's Jubel Cantata is a typical specimen, and Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht is the classic.

The Jews seem fated to wanDer forever among other nations and be faced perpetually with minority status and a legitimate pressure to acculturate and assimilate. If one compares the ending of The Eternal Road to Felix Mendelssohn's setting of Goethe's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, one is struck by a vital difference. Mendelssohn, although bearing the most celebrated name in early nineteenth-century German-Jewish history, had been converted and become a devout Protestant. Nevertheless through his music he celebrated with empathy and pride the courageous resistance of the Druids to the siege on their traditions and beliefs laid by violent Christian attackers. In contrast, The Eternal Road ends much more ambiguously with a vague hope for a return to Zion among a defeated and divided community, bowing to a fate of perpetual exclusion, persecution, and powerlessness.


Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night

The Heathen Muse in European Culture, 1700-1850
John Michael Cooper


Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night is a book about tolerance and acceptance in the face of cultural, political, and religious strife. Its point of departure is the Walpurgis Night. The Night, also known as Beltane or May Eve, was supposedly an annual witches' Sabbath that centered around the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains.
After exploring how a notoriously pagan celebration came to be named after the Christian missionary St. Walpurgis (ca. 710-79), John Michael Cooper discusses the Night's treatments in several closely interwoven works by Goethe and Mendelssohn. His book situates those works in their immediate personal and professional contexts, as well as among treatments by a wide array of other artists, philosophers, and political thinkers, including Voltaire, Lessing, Shelley, Heine, Delacroix, and Berlioz.
In an age of decisive political and religious conflict, Walpurgis Night became a heathen muse: a source of spiritual inspiration that was neither specifically Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim. And Mendelssohn's and Goethe's engagements with it offer new insights into its role in European cultural history, as well as into issues of political, religious, and social identity -- and the relations between cultural groups -- in today's world.


Among some of his (Goethe’s) most engaging/compelling musical experiences of his late maturity were the visits of Felix Mendelssohn, who was 12 years old in 1821 and had been introduced to Goethe personally in Weimar by his (Mendelssohn’s) teacher, Zelter. Further visits took place in 1822, 1825, and 1830. Goethe had Mendelssohn play for him and explain to him technical matters concerning music and music history. This relationship became one of tender devotion on the part of Goethe towards Mendelssohn: in 1822 Goethe said to Mendelssohn: “I am Saul and you are my David,” and in his last letter to Mendelssohn, Goethe began with “My dear son.” Mendelssohn dedicated his Piano Quartet in B minor, opus 3 to Goethe and composed music for “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” (1st version in 1832)…. Goethe was eager to hear instrumental music which was played by Reichardt, Kayser, Zelter, Eberwein, Hummel, Spohr, Beethoven, Baron Oliva, Szymanowska (female pianist), J. H. F. Schütz, and finally by Mendelssohn whom he repeatedly asked to play something for him.”]


Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, one of his greatest cantatas, was based on Goethe's Faust, and on Goethe's personal interpretation of the scene (Grove Dictionary 146). Mendelssohn's friendship with the poet lasted for a great many years, up until Goethe's death in 1832.

The first Walpurgisnacht

The Ouverture represents the transition from the winter to spring. The beginning in A-Moll is overwritten with “the bad weather”, while with the idiom into the Dur variant approaching the Walpurgisnacht in spring is announced. It is described in the following, as the priests and Druiden of the Celts meet secretly in the inhospitable mountains of the resin, in order to address after old custom with fire their prayer to the all father of the sky and the earth. Since their rites are forbidden by the Christian gentlemen however, everything must happen in the secret one. With cheat and to linings the soldiers of the Christians were frightened in such a manner that the Celts in peace can celebrate their Walpurgisnacht.
There are two Walpurgisnächte in Goethe's work. Admits is above all that from that fist I, in which a typical Hexensabbat is sworn to in visionär grotesque way. On the other hand Goethe takes poem the first Walpurgisnacht a heidnisches victim celebration developed to 1799 in that during thunderstorm eight to the cause to confront two incompatible ways of thinking and being LV each other.
Whole 19. Through century the romantic composers let themselves fist be inspired again and again from the picture world of the I and fist II, while the first Walpurgisnacht remained almost unknown. Only Carl Friedrich Zelter, Goethe friend and musical advisor, have try, the poem tone. It kept full fifteen years it under its papers, before it took distance finally from a project, which exceeded its imagination.
That was introduced by Zelter at that time twelve-year-old boy Mendelssohn with around sixty years the older Olympier Goethe, whom time and fame had coined/shaped. By Beethoven and Schubert to judge, understood the old gentleman not much about music. In its youth he had heard some of the Mozarts' works, whose clarity and harmony it zollte still at the age attention and acknowledgment; and it found favours to feel with the citizen of Berlin miracle child from good family the aftereffect of those melodies in those the ideal of its own youth lived. It would be inaccurate to speak of a co-operation between Goethe and Mendelssohn. The first important piece, to which the poet energized the young musician, was the Ouvertüre sea silence and lucky travel, which arrived only in the year 1832, Goethe's death year, at the public performance. That Goethe would have known to appreciate a music, so clearly under Beethovens the influence is to be doubted. Just as little it the score of the first Walpurgisnacht would have probably behagt. The work, in which orchestras and voices verwoben closely into one another are, becomes not completely fair the central thought of the artist Philosphen. From its “Faible for witches” seduced, Mendelssohn stated little interest in the deeper meaning of the poem: the always-lasting conflict between the instinktiven natural forces on the one hand and the mental clarity of a thought world coined/shaped by the clearing-up on the other hand. With the primarily romantic treatment of the article it remains on the level of a descriptive poem and tears us in tumbles uncontrolled thunderstorm eight.
The 1831 completed first minute of the score experienced substantial changes, before she arrived to 1842 at the premiere. Goethe did not experience no more, which regulation to his verses assign became, whose Vertonung lends a fascinating juvenile fire to them. Mendelssohn proves here as genuine romantics. It uses a pallet of magnificent tone qualities, lets the horns from the supple fabric of the Streicher step out and gives to the Holzbläsern a most personal note. The choirs are from a Schlichtheit, which lends occasionally the serious character of a Volksliedes to them, while proper large airs are assigned to the soloist.
The whole wealth of the romantic opera is united in this musical illustration of a poem, which reminds at the Feenzauber of shakespearscher scenes. The choir of the Druiden (No. 6 of the score) is from an imaginativeness, which only the late Verdi in the last act of its Falstaff reaches again. The composer, at whom Goethe estimated the causing its own youth, somehow not completely up-to-date one, appears here surprisingly as one of the prophets of the music 19. Century. With deciveness it secures the transition from Beethoven to the large rhapsodies of Brahms.
Jean Francois Labie
(Translation: Ingrid trusting man)


G O E T H E ' S   P A G A N   P O E T R Y

Goethe, a genius with unmistakable Pagan sympathies,
excelled as a poet, dramatist, novelist, essayist,
philosopher and scientist (his works occupy 140
volumes!). Here are several of his Pagan poems,
including his ballade "The First Walpurgis-Night," in
which the Pagans score a Discordian victory over their
oppressors. (I'm sure Goethe now dwells happily among
the Pagan Gods.) The ballade has been set to music by
Mendelssohn (Die Erste Walpurgisnacht), which is quite
good, but not suitable for small group performance.
Perhaps the Muses will help some modern Pagan to
compose a version for contemporary witches' sabbats.
Although only the God (Allvater) is mentioned, I've
left Goethe's text unchanged; it's easy to substitute
"Mother" for some or all of the "Father"s if you like.
-- John Opsopaus


THE FIRST WALPURGIS-NIGHT
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A DRUID.

Sweet smiles the May!
The forest gay
From frost and ice is freed;
No snow is found,
Glad songs resound
Across the verdant mead.
Upon the height
The snow lies light,
Yet thither now we go,
There to extol our Father's name,
Whom we for ages know.
Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;
Thus pure the heart will grow.

THE DRUIDS.

Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;
Extol we now our Father's name,
Whom we for ages know!
Up, up, then, let us go!

ONE OF THE PEOPLE.

Would ye, then, so rashly act?
Would ye instant death attract?
Know ye not the cruel threats
Of the victors we obey?
Round about are placed their nets
In the sinful Heathen's way.
Ah! upon the lofty wall
Wife and children slaughter they;
And we all
Hasten to a certain fall.

CHORUS OF WOMEN.

Ay, upon the camp's high wall
All our children loved they slay.
Ah, what cruel victors they!
And we all
Hasten to a certain fall.

A DRUID.

Who fears to-day
His rites to pay,
Deserves his chains to wear.
The forest's free!
This wood take we,
And straight a pile prepare!
Yet in the wood
To stay 'tis good
By day till all is still,
With watchers all around us placed
Protecting you from ill.
With courage fresh, then, let us haste
Our duties to fulfil.

CHORUS OF WATCHERS.

Ye valiant watchers now divide
Your numbers through the forest wide,
And see that all is still,
While they their rites fulfil.

A WATCHER.

Let us in a cunning wise,
Yon dull Christian priests surprise!
With the devil of their talk
We'll those very priests confound.
Come with prong and come with fork,
Raise a wild and rattling sound
Through the livelong night, and prowl
All the rocky passes round.
Screech-owl, owl,
Join in chorus with our howl!

CHORUS OF WATCHERS.

Come with prong, and come with fork,
Like the devil of their talk,
And with wildly rattling sound,
Prowl the desert rocks around!
Screech owl, owl,
Join in chorus with our howl!

A DRUID.

This far 'tis right,
That we by night
Our Father's praises sing;
Yet when 'tis day,
To Thee we may
A heart unsullied bring.
'Tis true that now,
And often, Thou
Favorest the foe in fight.
As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our olden ways,
Who e'er can crush Thy light?

A CHRISTIAN WATCHER.

Comrades, quick! your aid afford!
All the brood of hell's abroad:
See how their enchanted forms
Through and through with flames are glowing!
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms,
On in quick succession going!
Let us, let us haste to fly!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing,
And the arch fiend roars on high;
From the ground
Hellish vapors rise around.

CHORUS OF CHRISTIAN WATCHERS.

Terrible enchanted forms,
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing!
See, the arch fiend comes, all-glowing!
From the ground
Hellish vapors rise around.

CHORUS OF DRUIDS

As from the smoke is freed the blaze,
So let our faith burn bright!
And if they crush our olden ways,
Whoe'er can crush Thy light?

[Bowring translation]


THE CONSECRATED SPOT

When in the dance of the Nymphs, in the
moonlight so holy assembled,
Mingle the Graces, down from Olympus in secret
descending,
Here doth the minstrel hide, and list to their
numbers enthralling,
Here doth he watch their silent dances'
mysterious measure.
[tr. Bowring]


[All selections from "The Poems of Goethe," New York:
John D. Williams, 1882.]

finis



The Romantic Mendelssohn: The Composition of Die erste Walpurgisnacht

JSTOR: The Music of To-Day

THE FAUST LEGEND IN MUSIC



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