The Book With Seven Seals - The History of Its Creation

The History of Its Creation

On 23 February 1937, Franz Schmidt wrote the last notes of his oratorio in his home at Perchtoldsdorf, and inscribed the date below. From the time of the first sketches many years went by before he was able to complete what was to become his greatest work.

In the four little Preludes and Fugues for the organ (of 1928), some parts of the work are already foreshadowed, such as the Hallelujah and the closing address of God. Whereas two sketchbooks for the opera Notre Dame, and sketches for other works have been found, only a rough outline of the second part of the oratorio exists on two notebook-leaves. If this does not provide very much of trail for the actual composition, Schmidt himself has left us a very adequate statement about the writing-out of the work into full score: it took him two years (1935-1937).

Franz Schmidt completed the Prologue on 15 October 1935. He must have worked from 1 January to 1 July 1936 on Part 1. Then he had to stop writing again because his hand was extremely painful, and he hoped to improve it by a period of hospital rest. At the turn of the year 1936/37 the full score had grown as far as the sounding of the Seventh Trumpet. It was completed on 23 February 1937, and waited only a little more than a year for its premiere.

The premiere was held in Vienna on 15 June 1938, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Oswald Kabasta: the soloists were Erika Rokyta, Enid Szantho, Anton Dermota, Josef von Manowarda and Franz Schütz at the organ, and the musical recitative role of the Evangelist was sung by Rudolf Gerlach. The difficult choral music was sung by the Vienna Singverein (Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde).

We know from certain accounts, that Schmidt thought for a very long time about the setting of certain biblical passages which he wanted to bring together into an oratorio. He must have chosen letters of Saint Paul for the purpose, just as he thought of setting the Song of Solomon. It is very difficult to be certain who may have drawn his attention to the Apocalypse, but both Oswald Kabasta and Raimund Weissensteiner are mentioned in this connection.

When Schmidt definitely settled upon the Book of Revelation for his subject, in addition to his own house Bible, which contained the Martin Luther translation, he also consulted other translations in order to arrive at a beautiful and clear text. Who wrote the freely-constructed additions, which do not come from the Bible, has not been recorded. Schmidt maintained however in his introduction to the original performance, that he had determined to have no alterations to the biblical texts. His own words about this are: "I have also, in selections from the elision I have admitted above" - referring to his selection of verses from the Apocalypse - "held sufficiently to the original... "

Schmidt's attraction to a resonant word can be inferred because while he was writing out the full score he altered some words, as for example in the Prologue, where in place of "a seat stood there in heaven", "a throne stood there in heaven" appears as a textual improvement. Also in purely musical respects one can follow the thread of improvements which Schmidt worked on repeatedly until achieving the final form.

The work had its UK premiere on 24 May 1966, conducted by Bryan Fairfax.