58. Human and Divine
from The Concert - Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Hosted by Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Bruhns: Mein Herz ist bereit Bruhns: De Profundis clamavi Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht for String Sextet, Op. 4 The two composers that we’ll hear today draw on very different textual materials for their work. Nicolaus Bruhns, a seventeenth century German composer, set Biblical Psalms in his two sacred concerti. Arnold Schoenberg’s string sextet Verklärte Nacht, or “Transfigured Night,” is based on a poem which describes a man and woman talking in moonlit woods. Containing daring erotic and social themes, it was considered risqué even to the modernist circles in turn-of-the century Vienna. Yet despite the historical and textual gap, both composers used their music to link the human and the divine. While the text of Bruhn’s concerti is directed towards the divine, the expressive quality of the gestures and melodies are very human. And although the emotional journey of Verklärte Nacht seems to be entirely of this world, the sustained pure chords in the last measures of the piece indicate that the human element can finally be transcended for the clarity of the night.
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