DACOCD 567 (CD 1)

DACOCD 568 (CD 2)

Koppel considered the Three Psalms opus 48 to be his chef d’oeuvre. It is the climax of his compositions on biblical texts from 1949, and at the same time the first of his works for solo voices, choir and orchestra, including Roman Psalm (Mortalis Immortalium on texts by Seneca, 1954), the oratorio Moses (1964), Requiem (1966), Hymns of Praise (1974) and The Seventh Day (Hexaemeron, 1984), to which may be added the opera Macbeth (1970).

Koppel had read an eye witness account of a massacre during World War II, depicting how soldiers hustle a group of starved Jewish men, women and children into a van only to conduct the exhaustion gas into the hold. The trapped people start singing, but their song dies away as they gradually loose consciousness. To Koppel, this account was appalling, but at the same time he considered the victims’ singing a token of “an assured conviction about providence, a higher power that would turn everything to the good, even if this would happen only after death [1].”

As a model for his work, Koppel mentioned Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, which he heard for the first time already in 1933 in Amsterdam, but the three movements of Koppel’s work form a dramatic course of their own. Through threatening timpani and lamenting wind, the choral voices make themselves heard, ascending in melodic motion accompanied by shrill march rhythms and sombre brass motifs, turning into a polyphonic display of a Slavic-tinged hymn phrase, eventually fainting and dying out into the darkness of the beginning. Encircled by bright waving sounds, the tenor invokes the Lord, assisted by increasingly imploring counter voices, until gentle violin tones take over. The hallelujah of the last movement becomes more and more triumphant in its character, the tempo increases, chimes and trumpets join in, the rhythm turns into dancing, and with cymbals, trombones and bells, the music culminates in one last, embracing hallelujah, interrupted by a soft major chord.

On top of the score is written “Dedicated to my wife”. The first performance took place in 1949 with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choir conducted by Erik Tuxen and with the Icelander Einar Kristjansson as the soloist. To the writer of this note, the work has a special perspective, as I was studying at the academy of music with Herman D. Koppel, who in the subsequent lesson talked to my fellow student and me about the music. When we mentioned the march of the enemies as one of the features that had made impression, Koppel commented on the particular capacity of music to depict evil. The following year, Koppel’s Three Psalms were performed during the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Frankfurt am Main.

The chronological list in the bottom of this page shows us that vocal solo works played no prominent part in Herman D. Koppel’s production until 1949. Since 1939, however, as accompanist for the renowned Danish singer Aksel Schiøtz, Koppel had gained a thorough knowledge of the classical song repertoire, and Schiøtz urged him to write for the human voice himself. When Koppel explained to him his problems of connecting poems with music, Schiøtz suggested choosing texts from the Bible.

This was in March 1949, and the very same year Koppel composed four sets of songs, besides the Three Psalms opus 48 thirteen songs with piano in all. Schiøtz had opened his Bible on the Song of Songs and had quoted the proclamation of love “How beautiful you are, my darling!” which under the title Love in Five biblical songs opus 46 is framed by the exclamation I will awaken the dawn followed by a hallelujah, and a lamentation followed by another song of praise. The character of each song is distinct as a woodcut; in their mutual contrast they make a whole. Aksel Schiøtz gave the first performance of the songs in September at the BBC.

Fervour of love and passion marks the Four love songs opus 47, poems from the Song of Songs rendered with melodic sweetness and pianistic exuberance. They are dedicated to “My friends Karen and Gunnar Heerup”. Karen Heerup, opera singer at the Royal Danish Theatre, premiered them in September 1949.

Four Old Testament songs is the title of opus 49 which is built upon the same principles as opus 46, but here the intense basic mood of the music reflects the texts: The lamentation Cry Out to the Lord, the gentle declaration of love I Am the Rose of Sharon from the Song of Songs, followed by Hear My Prayer, o Lord from the Psalms, and a Hallelujah expressing a kind of confidence more akin to the one of the Three Psalms than to the jubilation of opus 48. The songs were dedicated to the singer Jolanda Rodio who gave the first performance. In Lone Koppel’s copy the composer wrote, “To my beloved Lone with thanks for all the many marvellous performances you have given these songs.”

In Two Psalms opus 55 and in Two biblical songs opus 59, the music accentuates the conflict in each of the text pairs: In opus 55, the trustful melodic ascent and the firmness of the chords in the first link against the stuttering vocal part of the second one accompanied by unruly rhythms and shivering outbursts; in opus 59 in reverse, the melodic and harmonic disorder from beginning to end of the first link against the carefree dancing rhythm of the second one.

The single Psalm 42 opus 68 is two-piece in itself, a struggle between doubt and belief, with the recurring outcry of the deer and the soul, and a resigned rocking epilogue. The work was written to his daughter Lone who performed it with the composer at her debut in 1961.

The first and the third of the Three songs opus 96 return to the texts of opus 59. The growth of Koppel’s means of expression in the twenty years between them, regarding harmony and metre, intensifies the interpretation of the texts: The threatening and shrill outbursts and rhythmical unrest of the piano in the first song, now carrying the title Fear, is set off briefly by a quiet passage to the words "In the way wherein I walked"; the third song entitled Joy is now ecstatic, with changing rhythmical accents recalling one of Koppel’s favourite works, Les Noces by Stravinsky, which resounded already in the opening of opus 46. Also the middle song Love takes up a text used earlier, melodically and harmonically deepened.

“Dedicated to my beloved wife” it says in the score of opus 96 which came into existence during a stay in Australia. “Together, the three songs, with their subjects of fear, love, and joy (…) make up the basic form of my music with a slow movement between two more excited ones. In the love song, I took up once more the Song of Songs chapter 4, “How beautiful you are, my darling”, and this time I included the wonderful words of verse 4: “Your neck is like the tower of David…”

In the strict sense of the word, Herman D. Koppel declared himself not a believer: “Any kind of orthodoxy is alien to me. But the religious feeling, as it finds expression in the Psalms of David and in the other poetic texts of the Old Testament, this I understand. These highly polarized moods, from deep repentance to ecstatic joy, contain an inner tension that can be released as music.”

Secular songs

While working with the biblical songs, Koppel began setting to music secular poems of the type he had tried out a few times in the 1930s. Three songs on poems by Johannes V. Jensen opus 51 were written and dedicated to Aksel Schiøtz. The May Song and Nature’s Leave were printed in a version with piano. They are related to Carl Nielsen, not least melodically, bringing forward the texts and leaving room for the singer to express the feelings behind, in the same way as the songs to follow.

Through Aksel Schiøtz, Koppel also got to know Paul la Cour, the poet. He sent his collection of poems Between Bark and Wood to Koppel who “was fascinated by the ecstatic longing for openness” and selected the Six songs on poems by Paul la Cour opus 54. The music matches the inward-looking character of the poems: Intervals are small, the vocal range is just above an octave, the motion is metrically regular, carried by a steadily progressing rhythm. The sad mood is tinged by deviations of mode and harmony. A few times the music reflects the text, as in the first song the heavy chords of the stone mason; the ascent on the words hurricane, tempest in the third song; the fluttering of the piano in The Butterfly; the urgent warning that ends the fifth song; and in the last song the words “fly out, fly away” that make the heavy chords of the piano yield to a tone row ascending through three octaves before these extremes are finally united.

Both composer and poet wanted a continued collaboration, but la Cour was hindered by working duties and illness. He heard the songs only in a radio broadcast three years later. After la Cour’s death in 1956, Koppel composed in his memory Five songs on poems by Paul la Cour opus 64, dedicated to “the little dear Lone”. Lone Koppel gave them the first performance after they had received the first prize in a song competition arranged by the Danish society for contemporary music (the second prize went to Koppel’s likewise anonymously submitted The Seasons opus 65). In the five songs, both voice and piano are mostly lightly pitched, with large melodic gestures adorned by the accompaniment. The form varies from the simple strophic Noon and the homogenous Full Moon and Morning to Dawn and Anxiety that make room for contrast, in the first an outburst of pain in the midst of the enjoyment of nature, in the other an alternation between dark and cold timbres.

In the fourteen years between opus 64 and 84, Koppel’s means of expression had widened. This is heard to the extreme in Three songs on poems by Nelly Sachs opus 84 where the voice part is marked by big leaps and by a many-pitchedness that also makes the piano motifs and chords prevent tonal orientation. The perpetual repetition of them therefore creates a pent-up expression underlining the despair of the poems. The songs are dedicated to Lone Koppel.

In the life-confirming Three songs on poems by Tom Kristensen and Paul la Cour opus 119, the voice part moves in large but harmonic intervals, while the piano accompaniment changes from mysterious sounds in the moon vision of the first song to impressionist summer colours in the last. The songs were dedicated to Lone Koppel.

Like these, the Three songs on poems by Verner von Heidenstam, Gustav Fröding and Erik Gustaf Geijer opus 121 recall the moods of the more than thirty years earlier settings of the La Cour songs. The whirls of a falling leaf in the piano part of the second song contrast the thoughtfully upwards striving melodic lines of the two surrounding songs.
The songs were dedicated to Björn Asker who gave the first performance in Stockholm 1991.

Herman D. Koppel did not accompany the last two sets of songs, but worked together with Nikolaj Koppel and Björn Asker during their preparation of the songs and attended the first performances.

HERMAN D. KOPPEL’s works for solo voice