For soprano, tenor, chorus and orchestra
Duration: 20 minutes
Music: Leo� Jan�ček (Composed 1914)
Text: Jaroslav Vrchlick�
Premiered: Prague 5/2/1917
Catalogue Number: JW III/8



When Jan�ček came to compose Věčne evangelium (The eternal gospel) in 1914, the aims of the Czech National Revival which had dominated the 19th century were on the brink of realisation. Jan�ček�s own zealous nationalism was infamous. For many years he belligerently boycotted the Austrian trams which ran past his house, he forbade his wife from speaking German with her family and famously wrote a 1905 piano sonata in memory of a worker killed in a demonstration for the establishment of a Czech university in Brno. Jan�ček was naturally myopic to outside cultural trends, preferring collecting folk songs throughout Moravia and the newly thriving Czech culture of his adopted home town.

The text of The Eternal Gospel was written by Emil Fr�da, working under the pseudonym Jaroslav Vrchlick�, a writer considerably more open to international influence that Jan�ček. He was at the centre of the Prague literary scene at the close of the 19th century, forming part of a group called �Lum�rovecs�, whose work was published in the periodical Lum�r. Vrchlick� was one of the most prolific writers of the period. He wrote librettos for operas by Foerster, Nov�k and Dvoř�k and for Dvoř�k�s oratorio St Ludmilla and Fibich�s cantata Spring Romance. Although Jan�ček took to mocking the Lum�rovecs � thinly disguised as the pretentious artists on the moon in Mr Brouček�s Excursions � he turned to the revered poet for his 1897 cantata Amarus and The Eternal Gospel.

Vrchlick��s text is a poetic version of Cistercian mystic Joachim de Fiore�s interpretation of the sixteenth chapter of the book of Revelation; it foretells the coming of the Kingdom of the Spirit where love is the overruling force. The short cantata starts in an uncertain A flat minor. Many of the textures used throughout the work are introduced in the opening bars: distinctive octave leaps in the strings, melancholic violin solos and repetitive motor-rhythms. The tenor (the voice of Joachim de Fiore) announces a wonderful new era, which is marked by fanfares. The celebratory mood is short-lived however and the melancholic tone of the opening returns in the second movement, though the chorus cut stridently across the accompaniment�s diffidence. The distinctive octave leaps return at the opening of the third movement, hushed and mystical, before the soprano (the voice of an angel) describes the kingdom full of love. The tenor, however, sings of earthly vice, portrayed by growling brass and timpani. The heavenly images win out and are answered by peals of alleluias. The straining violin solo takes on a resolute character as the movement slowly builds to further shouts of alleluia. The effervescence of this climax looks forward to the glorious apotheosis of The Cunning Little Vixen, where love and understanding are equally paramount. The fourth movement is more distant. The chorus return, now as if voices in a dream, before the cantata slowly builds to a final blaze in A flat major cut through with a affirmative version of the octaves leaps of the opening bars.

The Eternal Gospel never enjoyed the same popularity as Jan�ček�s other major choral and orchestral works, but it follows a seam from the earlier Amarus through to The Glagolitic Mass of Jan�ček�s esoteric approach to religious texts. Fellow composer Ladislav Vycp�lek described Jan�ček�s method in his review of the work in 1917, after its first performance at the Smetana hall.

A kingdom of love certainly chimes with the warmth central to many of Jan�ček�s works. Even in the prison camp of From the House of the Dead we find tenderness. Jan�ček wrote �you will not wipe away the crimes from their brow, but equally you will not extinguish the spark of God�. Whilst those sparks touch all in Jan�ček�s nonconformist vision, equally a dramatic flicker pervades every note the composer wrote.


Written for performance at the BBC Proms 2004 on the 11 August 2004 (Proms Publications edited by Mark Pappenheim)


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