Hans Werner Henze
»Barcarola« für großes Orchester

In his autobiography Reiselieder mit böhmischen Quinten (published in English as Bohemian Fifths), Hans Werner Henze writes of his despair over his own ageing in the late 1970s. Persistent thoughts of death accompanied the restless travels of the then fifty-year-old composer and conductor. Acute heart problems forced him, in April 1978, to be admitted to the emergency ward of a Vienna hospital; the journey there he experienced as “something dreadful, as though we were already in the realm of the dead”. Added to this was the loss of key patrons and friends. In March 1976, the director Luchino Visconti died, followed by Paul Dessau, the leading composer of the GDR, in June 1979. In the late 1940s, Dessau had provided considerable support to Henze after a suicide attempt, and since then, the two had been united by a close friendship.

All of this found its way into the large-scale orchestral work Barcarola, which Henze composed in the summer of 1979 on commission from the Tonhalle-Gesellschaft Zürich. The ringing D flat (or “Des” in German notation) in the bass register, which opens the piece to the fateful rhythm of the bass drum, is a reminder of the surname of his friend in East Berlin. The title refers to the boat of Charon, the ferryman of Greek mythology who carries the souls of the dead across the Styx to Hades. Henze had only recently engaged with Charon in his ballet Orpheus. Now he links the formal type of the Venetian gondolier’s song – usually in 6/8 time with gently rocking minor-key melodies – with the ancient image of the soul’s journey to the afterlife. “The musical material is transformed, altered and developed in a way one might compare to the mental processes in the mind of a dying person, in whom memories and new realisations arise,” writes Henze in his own commentary on the work.

The highly expressive sonic language of Barcarola is based on the use of twelve-tone rows and a strongly dissonant harmony. Its broad melodic arches and the striking handling of instrumental registers generate a direct suggestive power. Henze placed himself in an artistic lineage stretching from Monteverdi through Wagner and Mahler to Alban Berg. Unlike the avant-gardists of his generation, he was determined that his music should be understood. For this reason, he deliberately worked with sonic “passwords” intended to serve as “bridges of communication”. In Barcarola, these include not only the brass fanfares reminiscent of Monteverdi, symbolising the signal of the ferryman Charon, but in particular a quotation of the popular English Eton Boating Song in the harps – for the politically left-leaning composer, the song represents the decadence of the ruling class. The elegiac barcarole melodies, which move mainly between the lower strings and woodwind, also have a “speaking” quality. After the climax of the great finale, Henze incorporates a further quotation, taken from the prelude to the third act of Wagner’s Tristan: two who are close to death salute each other from afar. The redeeming shore is almost within sight.