Another Musical Intermezzo – ‘Lift up your legs!’

With all this talk of the Body and its importance, I want to invite you to think with me about a particular musical composition – ‘A Mass of Life’ by Frederick Delius.

You will recall I am very familiar with this extraordinary work, and that, at the beginning of the 20^th Century, I met it for the first time when the writings of Friederich Nietzsche were beginning to profoundly affect European culture.  I also knew that Eric Fenby’s initial encounter of a Delius work was in 1928 when he unexpectedly stumbled across the score of ‘A Mass of Life’ in a local music shop.

He was particularly struck by the poetic section towards the end, the ‘Mitternachtslied’, in which the mood of the music greatly moved him.

Many commentators have tried to analyse the whole score of this difficult ‘A Mass of Life’, and they have usually intellectualised it, considered it with ‘brain’ power only, without fully considering the way Delius’s music and Nietzsche’s poetry stir the emotions and seek to express the flowing movements of the body, performers and listeners alike.

At the beginning of section 2 in Part One there are these words –

‘Erhebt eure Herzen, meine Brueder, hoch! hoeher!

Und vergisst mir auch eure Beine!’

[‘Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher!

And do not forget your legs!]

Here is an obvious reference to the opening words of the ‘Sursum Corda’, the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving in the Christian Eucharistic Liturgy, and Delius’s music clearly mimics the priest’s vocal style. This parody calls on everyone to use their whole body, and dance in response.

I want to explore the ‘Body’ as a kind of ‘leitmotiv’ and consider the meaning of life, transcendence, the divine, and the nature of God, and how our bodies are affected by this work.

It’s not solely a matter of trying to understand if Nietzsche and Delius believed in God or not.  Rather, could they still have something to say and sing to us, so that we might resonate more fully with joy and the beauty of life?

I feel I could draw on my many and varied experiences, from 1810 to the present day, and hopefully bring a fresh sound into the mystery of God in our world.

I hope you will stay with me……….