The oratorio of the century in Würzburg Cathedral 
Bertold Hummel's "The Shrine of the Martyrs" was premiered with great success.
It can almost be said that for almost two hundred years, music history has been able to speak of choral works with sacred content, including scriptural texts etc., of works that also bear the name oratorio, but often only in terms of their formal design, so that they are also spoken of as secular oratorios, which is actually nonsense, even if Haydn writes large passages of thanksgiving and amen in his Seasons, but not of real oratorios. We will not analyse why this is the case here. However, the thought comes to mind when one is confronted with a genuine oratorio, such as this work "The Shrine of the Martyrs" by Bertold Hummel.
Church musicians are probably familiar with the composer Hummel, because his name at least, even if they have perhaps not yet sung or played anything by him, is constantly encountered in recent publications of music for church services. And a good organist will not only be able to confront his congregation with contemporary organ music with his now famous "Alleluia", but perhaps also win them over, because the famous Easter Alleluia is always audibly present.
Hummel knows what an oratorio really and originally is. He was a practising church musician for many years and he does not confuse the concept of the prayer hall, the "oratorio", with the concert hall. He knows how to deal musically with biblical, legendary and irrefutable texts of the Christian doctrine of salvation at the end of the second millennium of the Christian era, incorporating tradition and doing justice to the present, and obviously has to do so in accordance with the expressiveness of the text, because what was heard is simply convincing and compelling.
The text was conceived by Bishop Paul-Werner Scheele, in collaboration with the composer, as was and is customary for all great vocal works. The whole work was commissioned by the Bishop of Würzburg, the diocese of the Apostles of Franconia, on the occasion of the martyrdom of St Kilian, St Kolonat and St Totnan 1300 years ago.
According to the words of Bishop Scheele in the excellently designed programme booklet, the work "shares its meaning and aim, subject matter and structure with the Kilian shrine by H. G. Bücker, which has stood in the west crypt of the Neumünster church since 1978." The relevant sides of the shrine, which inspired the content and textual message, are also illustrated at the relevant points in the programme booklet. The text itself contains excerpts from the ancient Irish "Lorica Patricks", biblical events and New Testament texts, as well as medieval texts, hymns, sequences and other sacred poetry.
The instrumentation for this work, Bertold Hummel's op. 90, is astonishing at first. Five solo singers, a narrator, large choir, girls' choir, boys' choir, orchestra, percussion ensemble in the orchestra and in the gallery by the large organ, choir organ, organ in the orchestra. But the work was written for St Kilian's Cathedral in Würzburg, where these possibilities are available.
The interaction of space and work is not a new phenomenon. French organ music is probably a prime example of this, although the organ itself is an additional factor. For a performance in a different church, the composer would certainly make arrangements.
It may be going a bit far, but the work seems to me to be so important that it justifies mentioning the various compositional elements and practices that reflect all the music of the Christian West.
After a spoken text from Patrick's Lorica, homage is paid to the Trinity to organ and percussion and the listener is thrown into the midst of the music of our time. The listener is then led out by a monumental Trinity verse from a vesper hymn for the feast of St Kilian, also conceived in unison in an archaic style.
The Evangelist (baritone) is introduced in the calling of the first disciples with the text from St Mark (Mk 1,16-18) of the calling of Simon and Andrew, recitatively in front of a transparent orchestra, the recitative elements enriched with large, demanding melismas. Peter's words from his first letter about the royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) are reminiscent of a classical accompagnato. The choir responds with "Dominus fecit nos regnum" (0ff 1,6) to a mysteriously restrained movement of the finest polyphony.
Kilian (tenor) is introduced with a beautiful cantilena at the calling of the Apostles of the Franks. The following texts from St Luke are about discipleship, which finally culminates in an anonymous text from the 12th century with a wonderful description of nature and the omnipresence of Christ, a female choir of great grace together with the all-encompassing solo soprano in a fascinating overall sound.
The third part , "Sea Storm" , is reminiscent of a Baroque or early Classical depiction of nature, albeit with two organs and percussion instruments, really threatening, before the Evangelist recalls the sea storm pericope (Mark 4:37-40) in the recitative.
A very central part of the whole is the Sermon on the Mount, where the evangelist's announcement "et aperiens os suum dicens" (Mt 5,1 f) simply gets under your skin. The following eight Beatitudes are scored for a wide variety of soloists and choirs, with the alto solo and male choir for the Blessed of the Pure Heart, for example, reminiscent of something as irretrievably beautiful as Brahms' Alto Rhapsody .
In the description of the missionary endeavours of the Apostles of Franconia, the Duke's voice (bass) makes us sit up and take notice when he asks God to change his heart, where the instruments and musical diction make the worldly prince appear musically "worldly".
The addition to the high priestly prayer (John 17:1) in the text from Ephesians "Unum corpus et unus Spiritus" for alto solo and woodwinds is special in its melodiousness and musical transparency and is also interpreted in this way. Here too, as so often in this oratorio, there is an extended vocalise that seems to continue the most beautiful Gregorian melismas into the virtuosic and yet internalised infinite. Something very similar follows from the soprano with the whole orchestra after the Evangelist's haunting description of the Golgotha incident to the text from St John: "No one has greater love than when he lays down his life for his friends". This is the perfect textual reference to the following description of the martyrdom of the Irish monks. This is followed by the parts"Resurrection" and"Heavenly Glory": whereby the ancient "Christ is risen" is included in the composition in the "Christus resurrexit a mortuis" (1 Cor, 20-22) , almost subliminally as a participation of the believing people.
The concluding homage to the three Apostles of Franconia, which is again introduced with the speaker's opening prologue, presents the Kilian sequence in various compositional practices from unison to organum techniques to mixed choir. With Psalm 150, which crowns the entire work, the composer allows the two-hour work to grow into an apotheosis of indescribable size and compositional density. A density that could have been expected or feared throughout the entire work in view of the huge performance apparatus. But this was not the case, for the fullness and monumentality in this oratorio is achieved through a variety arranged with marvellous transparency, which in turn must have arisen entirely from the equally varied texts.
Here, however, he lets the first psalm verses of the "Laudate Dominum in sanctis eius" resound after the opening Hallelujah with an awe-inspiring instrumental movement, shaped by massive brass to iridescent string clusters as a kind of ritornello, interrupted by choir, speaker, chorus, bass solo, soprano solo and finally the whole ensemble, before finally the "Gloria Patri" is slowly sung by all, beginning with a diminuendo referring to everything up to the boys' choir alone to "...in saecula saeculorum. Amen" does not fade away in the room, but resonates. A finale that radiated a fascination that caused a minute-long silence, an inner listening in the overcrowded St Kilian's Cathedral, before the huge applause broke out.

FAS