Page 29 - April.indd

uring the Napoleonic era nearly

every significant composer who
lived and worked in Vienna wrote
D at least some political music in ser-
vice to the Austrian state and Francis [Franz] II
(1768-1835), the last Emperor of the Holy Ro-
man Empire. This overtly political output rep-
resents some of their least enduring work, to wit
Beethoven’s lied, Keine Klage soll erschallen, WoO
1
121 (1796), Haydn’s solo cantata Die Schlacht Am
2
Nil, Hob XXVIb:4 (1800), Beethoven’s Chor auf
die verbündeten Fürsten, WoO 95 (1814), and his
3
4
cantata Der glorreiche Augenblick, Op. 136, com-
posed for the opening of the Congress of Vien-
na. The present obscurity of these works and
others like them is inextricably tied up in the oc-
casional nature of the text, but thoughtful recon-
sideration is warranted as the demand for secular
concert repertoire increases. Political music of
the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centu-

ries offers a rich and interesting source of choral
literature from an era otherwise dominated by
sacred oratorios, cantatas, and the mass.
Der Retter in Gefahr [The Rescuer in Danger],
SmWV 302 [1796], by Franz Xaver Süßmayr
(1766-1803) is just such a political piece. Scored
for SSSTB soloists, SATB double chorus and or-
5
chestra, it enjoyed immense initial popularity
followed by two centuries of complete obscurity,
matching the career trajectory of both composer
and librettist. Because its genesis can be traced so
clearly through extant sources, it is also an illu-
minating example of a compilation cantata from
the late eighteenth-century Viennese School
and, perhaps most notably, sheds new light on
the composer who completed Mozart’s Requi-
em, K 626. 6

CHORAL JOURNAL April 2021 Volume 61 Number 9 27