Vagn Holmboe
      Requiem for Nietzsche

* Helge Ronning (tenor)
* Johan Reuter (baritone)
* Danish National symphony Orchestra and Choir/Michael Schonwandt
dacapo 8.224207  TT: 51:44

Summary for the Busy Executive: Jagged.

Philosophers since at least David Hume talk mainly to one another
and rarely break through to the culture at large.  In that sense,
Nietzsche is a rock star among philosophers -- known by name to the
generally-educated, even if generally unread.  One doesn't have to
assume the burden of actually working through a book by Nietzsche,
when one has Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, Shaw's Man and
Superman, the detritus of World War II Allied propaganda, and even
Superman comic books, TV shows, and movies.  One has, at least, heard
of an Uebermensch, even if only book nerds and Ph. D. candidates have
actually read The Birth of Tragedy.  The limbo of known and not-known
has worked against a clear-eyed understanding of this writer.  The
facts of his life don't help, either, all too easily fitting into a
Genius Descends into Madness scenario.  Holmboe's Requiem essentially
plays this number.  If you're after insight into Nietzsche, this
really won't provide it.  It's a lot like expecting Amadeus to tell
you something new or valuable about genius in general or even about
Mozart.

One wonders, then, why Holmboe chose this subject.  I greatly admire
Holmboe's music.  This is slightly more chromatic and less contrapuntal
than most of the work I've heard.  However, it deals in memorable
musical ideas, powerfully realized.  But what's the aesthetic point?
Where's the artistic "buzz?"  What would Holmboe, a supremely cogent and
supremely balanced artist (a less Nietzsche-like personality is hard to
imagine), find to attract his talent?  I just don't get it.

Holmboe's text consists of a sequence of eleven sonnets by Danish poet
Thornkild Bjornvig on certain aspects of Nietzsche's life.  Not knowing
Danish and having approached the sequence only through translation, I
sense a really fine poetic mind at work.  The images neatly handle
complex action, and they are unusual tropes besides.  Again, I don't
gain much insight into Nietzsche beyond the Genius Goes Mad headline and
don't think much of the continual, probably ironic, identification of
Nietzsche with Christ, but a lot of poetry's point comes from the
"insides" of words and the music words make, both usually lost in
translation.  While I merely admire the poems, I can easily imagine a
Dane moved by them.  Perhaps this explains the attraction for Holmboe.

The music works on me like the poetry does.  I can admire the quality of
the musical ideas, the fact that their distinctive shapes allow me to
remember them despite their complexity, and the development of the
musical argument.  Here and there, I admit, the music even moves me, but
not as much as the symphonies, string quartets, or even a "light" work
like the recorder concertino.

The performance seems very good.  It makes a case for the work.  I
particularly admire Johan Reuter, the baritone soloist, who has much of
the work, a singer who knows how to communicate with an audience.  The
choral work is knock-out splendid, and the recording handles very well
indeed the tricky balances among large forces divided into their own
"spheres of influence," a characteristic of Holmboe's symphonic style.

Steve Schwartz