Herman D. Koppel Edition, Vol. 6: 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. 6: The Hour of Paradise

By Christian Westergaard and Esben Tange

With Two Biblical Songs, Op. 59 for soprano and piano, Herman D. Koppel aims for an international dissemination of his religious songs, and these two biblical songs indeed premiered in Stockholm in 1955. Two Biblical Songs is a condensation of two of the existential core emotions that Koppel returns to repeatedly in his religious songs.

The first song, ‘I Cried Unto the Lord’, with text from David’s Psalm 142, is a deeply felt lament that plays directly into the Holocaust trauma that plagued Koppel and many others in the post-war years. With the human voice as an expressive medium, the pain, the experience of overwhelming force, and finally a prayer for the Lord’s generosity is laid bare.

The second song, ‘Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord’ with text from David’s Psalm 100, is a surrender to jubilation in the awareness of God’s greatness and goodness. With a violent percussive piano part, reminiscent of Béla Bartók – one of Koppel’s musical heroes – and a text that celebrates joyful noise, it’s music on the verge of boiling over with joy. Along the way, it’s as if we’re in the synagogue, where the cantor leads the praise. ‘For the Lord is good’ sounds over a static piano tone before the last ecstatic ride towards a powerful conclusion.

After the religious masterworks oratorio Moses and Requiem in the 1960s, Three Songs on Poems by Nelly Sachs, Op. 84 followed in 1971, which are short songs in a porous free-tonal style characterised by great seriousness and dedicated to Lone Koppel. With modernist texts by the German-Swedish Jew Nelly Sachs, Koppel here cultivates a magically expressive expression stretched between star-longing and nocturnal death. The music in ‘Abgewandt warte ich’ (Turned Away, I Wait) is crystal clear with dissonances that stand out in naked beauty. And with a text saturated with love longing, the subdued tonal language seems all the stronger.

In ‘Hier und da’ (Here and There), sudden abysses appear in the piano’s tonal depths. But with the text’s mention of a ‘lantern of mercy’ that illuminates the darkness, there may be hope for the captured fish and the unhappy lovers we encounter in the song. The intensity continues right to the end in ‘So steig der Berg’ (Thus Rises the Mountain). After a quiet vibrating beginning where everything stands still, it seems all the stronger when the notes suddenly flash in the piano or condense into hard sounds to the words ‘Schwermut-Granit’ (melancholy granite). Thereafter, the music moves into a wonderfully uncertain world, where a sweet trilling on the word ‘Liebe’ warms the heart.

In Two Songs on Poems by Karin Boye, Op. 92b, composed two years after the Nelly Sachs songs, we encounter a related sensitivity. Both texts come from Swedish Karin Boye’s second poetry collection Gömda land (Hidden Land) and are saturated with a deep longing, which musically is expressed in tension-filled quiet music that is on the verge of bursting from within, and which occasionally leads to sudden passionate outbursts.

In ‘Några hjärtan är skatter’ (Some Hearts Are Treasures), the focal point is the fire that glows enticingly with the risk of annihilation as a result. In ‘Källvattnet’ (The Spring Water), Koppel seeks downward and inward with a recurring falling motif in the piano. And with a text about the spring water, which may seem poor and colourless at first, and which therefore gives access to justice, it seems as if the music is seeking towards a completion in an all-encompassing silence. We are simultaneously in the cosmos and deep in the soul.

Three Songs on Psalm 142, the Song of Songs and Psalm 100, Op. 96, like the 15 miniatures for piano, were composed around the turn of the year 1975–76 in Australia. Here, Herman D. Koppel had a happy time with his wife Vibeke. A few months later, she became seriously ill and died shortly after. The songs, which are ‘dedicated to my beloved wife’, therefore also stand as a memory of Vibeke and a marriage that spanned 40 years.

All three texts from the Psalms of David and the Song of Songs have previously been set to music by Koppel, and he later said that the three songs form ‘my musical basic form with a slow movement between two more vigorous ones’. Musically, however, something new is afoot. The tonal language is free-tonal and condensed. Koppel now makes a virtue of condensing the biblical content into a musical expression where everything is clear within a few notes.

In ‘Fear’, the depiction of anxiety is more radical than in ‘I Cried Unto the Lord’ composed over 20 years earlier. With a lurking crescendo and jumping notes in the piano part, we are in an uncertain world, and with a luminously intense melody line that, in turn, forms a straight line, it’s like a sword formed in music. ‘Love’ is simple, floating music, where each phrase is formed with the utmost caution. Entirely in keeping with the text from the Song of Songs, where the beloved’s body is described in detail and with great love.

In ‘Joy’, Koppel reaches back to his youth’s inspiration from Balinese gamelan music, where the usual hierarchical sense of key is suspended. The notes are flung out in liberated dance. In short, a happy music by the now 67-year-old Herman D. Koppel.

Two Songs on Poems by Browning and de la Mare, Op. 96 from 1982 are dedicated to Lone Koppel and the Swedish baritone Björn Asker, who married the following year. Their love for each other and Herman D. Koppel’s lifelong love for music are the focal points of the songs. And with texts by the two British poets Robert Browning and Walter de la Mare, Koppel here chooses to compose in a milder and brighter tonal language akin to Benjamin Britten.

In ‘Meeting at Night’, however, we are initially in a dark musical world, where the notes are bound to each other two by two in an unreleased yearning movement. But halfway through, a transformation occurs. The music becomes more liberated and with an undulating rhythm that ties to the words ‘and a voice less loud ...’ We witness a rendezvous between two lovers in candlelight, culminating in a magical ending with a transcending tone sequence rising towards heaven.

This leads beautifully into ‘Music’, which is characterised by a wonderfully organic music where words and tones merge in a rocking movement. With a text that tells us that through music we can be transformed, rise above time and enter a magical world, we are dealing with a key song.

Three Songs on Poems by Heidenstam, Fröding and Geijer, Op. 121 from 1989 are short strophic songs characterised by a saturated sensuality close to nature and man’s most intimate thoughts, with texts by three older Swedish poets. The songs, which are Herman D. Koppel’s last and aphoristic in form, are permeated with gratitude for life. And with the dedication to his son-in-law Björn Asker, family is once again an important musical inspiration.

‘Paradisets timma’ (The Hour of Paradise) is simple poetic music, where Koppel with gently struck tones brings us into the world of sleep on a summer night, where we sense a radiant paradise at dawn. In ‘Ett grönt blad på marken’ (A Green Leaf on the Ground), Koppel cuts to the most important. Each word is staged musically, so that one senses how infinitely much is hidden in the most basic; the green, the earth and the air.

‘Natthimmelen’ (The Night Sky) is a serene death song. In a slowly advancing music, Koppel occasionally lets the music come to a halt in the interplay between the singer and the pianist. And with the choice of Erik Gustav Geijer’s beautiful text – about surrendering to the night in confidence of being one with the world’s love – Herman D. Koppel here in his last song expresses confidence and great courage.