Herman D. Koppel Edition: Vol. 4: Biblical Songs

The Song Composer Herman David

By Christian Westergaard and Esben Tange

Herman D. Koppel was over 40 years old before he truly emerged as a song composer, and it was the tenor Aksel Schiøtz who acted as the catalyst. Both before and after the war, Koppel and Aksel Schiøtz had an intense collaboration, and after a concert in Esbjerg in March 1949, Schiøtz asked once again: ‘Why don’t you ever write any songs for me?’. And when he didn’t get much of an answer to that question, he reached for the Bible in the bedside drawer and opened it to the Song of Songs.

This is how Koppel described, many years later, the situation that led to a long series of vocal works in the following years. In 1949 alone, Koppel wrote four substantial works based on biblical texts, and up until his final compositions around 1990, vocal music played a central role in his work.

However, this is not the whole truth about Koppel as a song composer, for as early as the 1930s, Koppel composed a few songs which, in retrospect, proved to be significant. They are indeed simple, at times naive songs. But with texts by some of the most important poets of the time – from the cultural radical dreamer Otto Gelsted, to the expressionist Tom Kristensen, to the central modernist Johannes V. Jensen - they express a poetic longing to become part of the greater nature at a time when the classical lied was facing headwinds.

Throughout the nearly 60 songs Herman D. Koppel composed during his lifetime, two threads emerge that are central to understanding Koppel as a person, symbolically expressed through his two forenames: Danish-German Herman and Jewish David. Despite Koppel distancing himself from the Jewish immigrant environment he grew up in during his youth, and despite Koppel leaving Mosaisk Troessamfund (The Jewish Community in Denmark) after World War II, it was precisely by studying the Old Testament that he became aware of the possibilities hidden in setting words to music.

Koppel’s expressive music for biblical texts bears witness to contact with hitherto hidden emotions, and Koppel could now also express the painful experience that came with the revelation of the Holocaust, which only became widely known in the years after the war. At the same time, the Old Testament poetry also proved to contain depths of love and a notion of the strength of faith that spoke strongly and directly to him. In addition to the religious songs, which extend all the way up to Three Songs on Psalm 142, the Songs of Songs and Psalm 100 in 1976, this also led to a number of larger choral and orchestral works, such as the oratorio Moses and Requiem.

The immersion in the biblical universe and the recognition of his Jewish roots further led to an interest in the poetry of the time and resulted in a resumption of work on secular songs. From 1950 and for the next 40 years, a series of collections of songs followed, set to texts by mainly Danish, but also Swedish, German and English poets. Here, Koppel expresses strong existential feelings and an intimate sensing of the universe, expressed through Danish nature.

Paul la Cour, whom Koppel met in 1950, plays a major role with neo-romantic texts for a total of 11 songs, the last of which are included in Three Songs to Poems by Tom Kristensen and Paul la Cour from 1989. And in The Seasons from 1957, Koppel returns to some of the poets he cultivated in his youth, as well as the symbolists Johannes Jørgensen and Viggo Stuckenberg.

Koppel’s songs hold a special status among the genres in which he composed. Stylistically, they span widely. From the aphoristic to a soul-shaking expressivity, which is largely tied to the great dramatic talent possessed by his daughter – soprano Lone Koppel – for whom many of the songs were composed. And it is through the songs that we come closest to Koppel as a person. Here, both Herman and David speak.

Vol. 4: The Mystery of Faith

By Christian Westergaard and Esben Tange

Five Biblical Songs, Op. 46 from 1949 mark both a breakthrough for Herman D. Koppel as a composer towards a more expressive musical language, and the beginning of a new era for Danish vocal music, liberated from Carl Nielsen’s Danish songs that emphasised popular communal singing. The songs possess a musical radiance and are closely tied to the Jewish cantor tradition, which Koppel knew from his childhood, where a precentor guides the congregation through a series of fundamental human states in the synagogue.

In the first song, ‘Intonation’, we are introduced to the biblical universe in the form of an awakening, with notes like flashes of light from the harp-inspired piano playing, and with a majestic declamation of the text from the Psalms of David, heralding the coming of dawn. Later, we encounter love through the core text ‘How fair you are, my beloved’ from the Song of Songs, in a more cautious musical language where the notes are lifted with moving humility.

Five Biblical Songs seeks the extremes both textually and musically. We experience the extremities in the meeting between the heartfelt lament with the words ‘outside the sword bereaved, and inside death’ and the final ‘Hymn’, which has the character of praise and resurrection. ‘Hallelujah! Sing to the Lord’ rings out to the piano’s tones, struck with great percussive force.

In Four Love Songs, Op. 47, composed shortly after Five Biblical Songs , the music is entirely different in its intimacy. With a floating melody, where the notes entwine as if caressing, we are in the first song ‘Kiss Me, Give Me Kisses’ in an intimate poetic universe. But beneath the sensual surface lies tension.

In ‘On My Bed at Night I Sought Him’ and ‘Where Has Your Beloved Gone?’, we follow the woman seeking her lover. At times with hectic, impatient music, but primarily magical and wonderful with singing dolce tones, before the resolution in the last song ‘Listen! There Is My Beloved!’, where the notes glow at the sight of the loved one.

With Four Old Testament Songs, Op. 49, Koppel ventures into a darker register. The four songs are composed for mezzo-soprano and piano, and in the first song ‘Cry Aloud to the Lord’ from Lamentations, we witness an invocation. With tones carved out as if an irresistible force of nature, we meet a person whose only recourse is prayer and faith in the Lord.

And with a quiet, painful wandering created by a lamenting repetitive music, the gravity increases in ‘Lord, Hear My Prayer’. The contrast is all the greater to the last song ‘Hallelujah! Praise the Lord’, where with bell-clear piano tones in both high and low registers and a song text that is flung into space, we approach the mystery of faith. A religious primal force set to music.

In Two Psalms of David, Op. 55a and David’s 42nd Psalm, Op. 68 from 1951 and 1960, the format and contrasts are larger, and Two Psalms of David also exists in a version for soprano and orchestra. One moment it’s the art of suggestion. This is the case at the beginning of ‘David’s 121st Psalm’, where the music comes creeping, and where the melody to the text ‘I lift up my eyes to the mountains’ is shaped like a tone ladder. The next moment there is a vehement invocation of the Lord. In the subsequent ‘David’s 6th Psalm’, it culminates with a heart-rending cry to be saved from death. With large chords, carved out with great authority, an orchestral power is sensed. Liberating.

David’s 42nd Psalm has the character of a solo cantata and is dedicated to the young Lone Koppel and premiered at her debut from the Royal Danish Academy of Music. From the very beginning, the contrast is as great as possible between an explosive force in the piano part, where the tones