Odysseus

Odysseus: Szenen aus der Odyssee für Chor, Solostimmen und Orchester (Odysseus: Scenes from the Odyssey for Choir, Solo Voices and Orchestra) is a secular oratorio (Op. 41) composed by Max Bruch and first performed in 1873. It was Bruch's most successful work in his own lifetime. German unification created a wave of patriotic euphoria across the country, and French war reparations created an economic windfall. The time was right for a new work with a theme of the love of homeland. It was popular in Germany and internationally and brought Bruch to Liverpool. Composition It occurred to Bruch to adapt the Homeric epic in September 1871 while he was searching for a new libretto. As he said “The splendor of this primeval work of poetry became so clear to me that I could no longer dispel the thought of turning it into a series of lyrical scenes... The musical image of the entire work, its form, appeared clearly before my mind’s eye before I had written a single note.” He entrusted the work of transforming this detailed outline into a complete work to the librettist Wilhelm Paul Graff. Bruch's work on Odysseus (“a pleasure impossible to describe”) proceeded quickly and he had completed it by November 1872. A performance of the six scenes he had completed to date was staged in Bremen on 6 May 1872. When the work was published, it came out with French and English translations (by Natalia Macfarren) as well as the original German. Setting and significance Writing to his sister in 1871, Bruch said that he had selected Homer's narrative as in preference to a religious theme offering the ‘Christian lamentation and the poetic tears of Bach’s cantatas.” In 1873, writing to his publisher Simrock, Bruch said, "Biblical subjects have remained and still remain alien to me; the old Masters have produced so many powerful works in this area (i.e. sacred oratorio) that it is possible for us to create independent and original works only in conjunction with other subjects. It is not accidental that all oratorio projects since Mendelssohn have failed." (Later in his career Bruch did however compose oratorios on religious themes). The classical setting was significant; it represented an alternative mythological universe to the Norse themes of Richard Wagner. In contrast to the nationalist mysticism of Wagner, the classical world embodied the hopes of German liberals that the new Reich would become an enlightened, new-classical civilisation.