Das Liebesmahl der Apostel
The Love Feast of the Apostles is one of the cantata form comparable work for men's chorus and orchestra by Richard Wagner. It is based on a biblical scene of Acts and is among the few choral works of Wagner, the only spiritual.
The composition of the work went Wagners moved from Paris ahead to Dresden in 1842. On 2 February 1843 the Royal Saxon Court Conductor Wagner and agreed to take the post of chief conductor of the Dresden Liedertafel at the scheduled for July great song festival in Dresden. Wagner was commissioned to compose a new, half-hour work, which should be listed at the song festival by all Saxon male choirs. As a result, Wagner interrupted his work on the opera Tannhäuser and wrote a text on the basis of a passage from the book of Acts, in which the Pentecostal events are retold to the appearance of the Holy Spirit. In spring was the rapid setting; put as occupation Wagner arrested three men's choirs (depending TTBB), Twelve Apostles (12B ), a celestial choir ( 16T, 12 bar, 12B), and a large orchestra with quadruple wood, a large sheet contingent including Serpent, large string ensemble, four timpani and two harps. On July 6, 1843 work in the Frauenkirche in Dresden, composed of 1200 singers, 100 orchestra members was premiered.
The work was enthusiastically received by the audience and published several times in the sequence of the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel and Novello. While the piece held up to the turn of the century in the repertoire of German Male Voice Choirs, Wagner himself was not particularly pleased by the first performance of the work, later spoke disparagingly of the work and only managed it no longer even on. From the Dresden Choral he could dissolve, by passing on the baton to his friend Ferdinand Hiller.
As a remarkable effect of the late orchestra use should be mentioned. The first 25 minutes singing the chorus a cappella, until the orchestra begins with the appearance of the Holy Spirit. The mysterious effect of several times in the height of the church at various galleries up into the dome into distributed and partly invisible posted choirs trying to achieve later in Parsifal Wagner.