King David

On Friday, I was listening to a recording of Josef Hoffmann playing Rachmaninoff's C-Sharp Minor Prelude, and with the first three notes, I remembered the term "sound picture" or "tone picture" that I think I first encountered in an older book about Beethoven.

That Rachmaninoff prelude is so vivid that images and emotions immediately came into play and moved me away from thinking of musical values like harmonic progressions and the performer's inflections that usually occupy my mind when I'm listening.


Friday evening, I attended Rich Balach's senior recital and had similarly fresh and transporting experiences listening to Wolf's "Schlafendes Jesuskind" and "Begegnung."


Last night, I had the privilege and fun of playing piano in Southeastern's performance of Honneger's King David. The work is a compelling choice for a college department to present. It's a masterpiece involving a variety of 20th century techniques in addition to being a little Hebraic and a little Handelian. It's challenging for the performers, but not as forbiddingly difficult as a 20th century work can be. There are lots of solos, each of which is brief, of a distinct character, and has a few difficulties of pitch or rhythm. Thus, lots of students get to sing manageable but challenging solos.

In the midst of all of this is the conductor who, on this occasion, was our own very capable Dr. Dan Gordon. This was my first time playing an extended work with him and I was impressed with his conducting clarity and presence of mind. He made me think of a World War I fighter pilot, exposed to the elements, piloting, sometimes upside down, through clouds of bitonal bullets and metrical mayhem - an odd image, but an appropriate one for a work premiered in 1921.


As a member of the chamber orchestra playing this performance, I had the perspective of a pianist sitting in front of singers, behind trumpets, next to a keyboardist (playing harmonium and celesta parts), and at the opposite side of the room from the percussion, cello, and trombone. What I heard was not what the audience heard since I was sitting two feet from the piano and positioned as I just described. So while I'd like to hear the overall product, I did get to know about some details that the audience didn't experience as fully as I did. This is one of the reasons that playing in performances of works like this is so valuable. You get an entirely different perspective on the work involving a different kind of intimacy. While the experience provides another way of understanding the work that I could share with others, it is primarily meaningful and special to me.

This particular piano part is a very enjoyable part to play once you get over the fact that you are counting for much of an hour and half while also trying to calibrate your musicality to the movements of the conductor. Actually, those things can be pleasurable, too, but they require discipline.


During our rehearsals and the performance, I started to appreciate the extent and power of Honneger's "tone painting" in this work. Similar to my experiences with Hindemith, once I accepted Honneger's techniques as a part of his language, I could more readily focus on how masterfully clear he is in conveying the experiences that his "symphonic psalm" is all about. His constant responsiveness to text is something he shares with Handel.

A few examples from the piano corner:

#2 The Song of David, the Shepherd - the chromatic counterpoint within a small range throughout beautifully conveys the feeling of the "quiet pool" of the text, but it can also convey a sense of disquietude as David desires restoration of spirit, protection from pain, and so forth.

#4 Song of Victory - the energy of this choral writing is totally galvanizing. I'm surprised that this brief chorus hasn't become a musical icon to be used by HBO and others alongside the opening of Carmina Burana and the Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem.

#6 Psalm: In the Lord I put my Faith - the piano chimes in with tremelo and vaulting patterns at "Flee like any bird unto the mountain" instantaneously transporting the listener to a different clime. It is also in this number that the pianist gets to strum the first harp-like chords that frequently accompany David in his many moods throughout the oratorio.

#11 Psalm: God the Lord shall be my light - the rhythm of the piano part is positively infectious and underscores the joy of triumph over a dangerous foe as described in the text.

#12 Incantation of the Witch of Endor - I've been involved with a couple of performances of King David and this number seems to capture the imaginations of the listeners the most. It's about an incident with Saul and a witch that is probably kind of obscure to a lot of us. Honneger has his own fresh way of painting the creepy sound-world of such a scene. In a way, it's in the tradition of Berlioz. But it strikes me that to paint his scene, Honneger doesn't resort to anything particularly novel in terms of instrumentation or instrumental techniques (for his time) as Berlioz did. To me, the two pianissimo interjections played by the piano at "Appear! Appear!" seem as erie as any woodwind bending its pitches. Of couse, a lot of the imaginative impact of this movement comes from the spoken monodrama.

At the end of #12 there's a strange chord, one that's physically uncomfortable to play for both hands. There's so much sound going on when you play it that I doubt anyone could discern if you just played a more comfortable cluster in each hand. I tried that in rehearsal and it sounded pretty much the same to me. But in the performance, I played Honneger's chord. Maybe he wanted the pianist to feel a little uncomfortable there, and at the very least, I'm sure the pitches he wrote fit logically with everyone else's notes at that moment.

#16 The Dance before the Ark - includes a very striking chord change in an already sparkly bit of writing for the piano at the word "splendour" in the phrase "O radiance of the morn and the splendour of noon, Mighty God be with us."

#18 Song of the Handmaid - has a questionable instrumentation choice, I think. In a pretty transparent texture, piano and flute play short notes together in a high register, and the tuning is problematic, given the nature of the instruments themselves. But maybe that slight disagreement about pitch is what Honneger wanted - an imitation of the sounds of crickets David could have heard when he rose from his bed to walk around the roof of the palace one evening and saw Bathsheba.

#19 Psalm of Repentance - puts words of repentance in the mouths of both male and female choristers which made me think of David and Bathsheba repenting together. That's a scene I'd never thought of before.


This brings me to a final general reflection on King David. Before the concert, Dr. Gordon prayed a thoughtful prayer that emphasized that David was human in all the best and worst ways that we are, too. I believe Honneger's music communicates the richness of that human story. Indeed, it restores humanity to a familar character from the pages of the Bible.