Mitternacht und Tag

Cantata for Wartime

für Frauenchor und Orchester

women's choir and orchestra

Edition: Performance material

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Description

‘[…] War now placed, where War belongs – among the trades and artisans.’ These uncannily prophetical lines by Herman Melville are recited by the female choir at the beginning of the Cantata of Wartime. Ernst Krenek created these musical settings from a selection of Melville texts on the American Civil War during his exile in the United States just a few months after the Battle of Stalingrad. Reviews of the first performance and the European premiere (1954 in Hamburg) praised the cantata as an emotionally compelling masterpiece. Krenek effectively augmented the work’s contrapuntal and, at times, twelve-tone structure with dramatic intensity, sprechgesang and arioso sections, and expressive tremolo effects.

Orchestral Cast

2 · 2 · 2 · 2 - 4 · 2 · 2 · 0 - P. S. (Trgl. · hg. Beck. · kl. Tr. · gr. Tr.) (2 Spieler) - Str.

More Information

Title:

Mitternacht und Tag

Cantata for Wartime

für Frauenchor und Orchester

Text von Herman Melville, deutsch von Ernst Křenek

Language:

German, English

Edition:

Performance material

Publisher/Label:

Schott Music

Year of composition:

1943

Opus:

op. 95

Duration:

12 ′

World Premiere:

March 24, 1944 · Minneapolis, MN (USA)
University of Minnesota
Conductor: Dimitri Mitropoulos · Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra

October 11, 1954 · Hamburg (D)
Conductor: Ernst Krenek · Symphonieorchester des NDR · Frauenchor des NDR · Choir director: Otto Franze
(German Version)