At church, the current sermon series is on 1 Kings and we recently came to where the prophet Elijah enters the scene. This led me to return to a favourite piece of music, Elijah, which was first performed in 1846.
Elijah is a compelling figure in the Bible. He is a prophet who faithfully seeks to follow the God of the covenant, YHWH in the midst of a declining Israel (Northern Kingdom) characterised by injustice, violence, and idolatry. The people suffer from drought and food insecurity. Elijah does a great miracle to defeat the prophets of Baal. Intimidated by death threats from Queen Jezebel he runs away, and is exhausted, both physically and spiritually. But Elijah is cared for by an angel and has his faith and courage renewed.
Felix Mendelssohn took the story of Elijah and composed an oratorio [a composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists] that some considered to be one of the greatest expressions of that musical genre.
The text [libretto] written by Julius Schubring is brilliant and creative, composed only of interspersal of the text of Kings and other passages from the Bible, as can be seen on Wikipedia. The accompanying musical score emotionally empowers the text. This is all brought out in a beautiful and detailed commentary on the oratorio that was written by John Maclay for a performance at Grace Church in New York.
No comments:
Post a Comment