Fruits of the Cross: Passiontide Music Theater in Habsburg Vienna Robert L Kendrick

Abstract

With this monograph on the distinctive Viennese genre of the sepolcro, Robert Kendrick has plugged a long-standing gap in our knowledge of seventeenth-century music and theatre. This repertory comprises some forty-seven rappresentazioni sacre surviving with texts and music, of about seventy performed, mainly in Vienna, between 1660 and 1711 on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday during Holy Week each year. The genre seems to owe its origin to the tastes and patronage of Empress Eleonora Gonzaga ‘the Younger’ (1630–86), consort of Emperor Ferdinand III; it was cultivated in and after her widowhood, during the reigns of her stepson, Leopold I, and Joseph I. The book is particularly welcome as a detailed discussion of the music and texts of a well-preserved distinct, elite repertory from a period that is itself still too often taken as a mere transition to the great achievements of the eighteenth century. The poetry of the libretti is intellectually and theologically demanding; it is of high quality, as is the music. New pieces were written each year and set to music at short notice by three successive generations of composers, for performances, some in costume, before a stage set built in church to represent the Tomb of the crucified Christ; and for the Viennese court Holy Week was a time in which religious observance took precedence even over urgent political business. The four chapters of the book are arranged by topic rather than strictly chronologically, with extended discussion of selected examples, and useful appendices include checklists of surviving sepolcri and their putative modal/tonal schemes. Chapter 1 deals with the theatrical dimension of these pieces and their staging in Eleonora’s chapel (Maundy Thursday) and in the chapel of the Hofburg (Good Friday), their generic features, and their relationship to other meditative works; chapter 2 contextualizes their subject matter and their representation of Catholic penitence and metanoia (reorientation of one’s life). In chapter 3, which moves beyond conventional notions of the well-known pietas austriaca, the focus turns to the Habsburgs themselves and their immediate political and personal concerns, such as their use of the sacred relics possessed by the court, the gendering of public grieving, the expression of anti-Jewish sentiments, and the personal niche interests of the imperial family, such as astronomy. Chapter 4 concentrates on the technical aspects of the music, which had already been touched upon earlier. There are a couple of curious digressions: the first chapter includes an account of an adaptation of selections from a German-language sepolcro by J. H. Schmelzer in Vienna in 1917, and an epilogue describes another adaptation set up by Bruno Maderna and Luigi Nono in 1950.