Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Elias

Elijah (Basso)
As God the Lord of Israel liveth,
before whom I stand,
here shall not be dew nor rain these years,
but according to my word.

Help, Lord! Help, Lord!
Wilt thou quite destroy us?
The harvest now is over, the summer days are gone,
and yet no power cometh to help us!
Will then the Lord be no more God in Zion?

The deeps afford no water!
And the rivers are exhausted!
The suckling’s tongue now cleaveth for thirst to his mouth!
The infant children ask for bread,
and there is no one breaketh it to feed them!

Lord, bow thine ear to our pray’r!

Two Women
Zion spreadeth her hands for aid, and there is neither help nor comfort.

Ye people, rend your hearts, and not your garments,
for your transgressions, even as Elijah hath sealed the heavens through the word of God.
I therefore say to ye, forsake your idols, return to God;
for he is slow to anger, and merciful, and kind, and gracious, and repenteth him of the evil.

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Elias (Bass)
So wahr der Herr, der Gott Israels, lebet,
vor dem ich stehe:
Es soll diese Jahre weder Tau noch Regen kommen,
ich sage es denn.

Hilf, Herr! Hilf, Herr!
Willst du uns denn gar vertilgen?
Die Ernte ist vergangen, der Sommer ist dahin,
und uns ist keine Hilfe gekommen!
Will denn der Herr nicht mehr Gott sein in Zion?

Die Tiefe ist versieget!
Und die Ströme sind vertrocknet!
Dem Säugling klebt die Zunge am Gaumen vor Durst!
Die jungen Kinder heischen Brot!
Und da ist niemand, der es ihnen breche!

Herr, höre unser Gebet!

Zwei Frauen (Sopran, Alt)
Zion streckt ihre Hände aus,
und da ist niemand, der sie tröste.

Zerreißet eure Herzen und nicht eure Kleider! Um unsrer Sünden willen hat Elias den Himmel verschlossen durch das Wort des Herrn! So bekehret euch zu dem Herrn, eurem Gott, denn er ist gnädig, barmherzig, geduldig und von großer Güte, und reut ihn bald der Strafe.

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R. Larry Todd

Few compositions document as compellingly as Elijah the shifting critical reception accorded Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy during the past one hundred and fifty years. At the English premiere, heard at the Birmingham Musical Festival in 1846, Elijah was hailed as an undisputed masterpiece; since then it has remained a staple of the oratorio repertory, rivaled in English-speaking realms only by Handel’s Messiah. But, like the swing of a pendulum, Mendelssohn’s reception precipitated a counterreaction. First, there was Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitic attack in the anonymously published „On Judaism in Music“ (1850). And in the closing decades of the century, there was George Bernard Shaw’s criticism of Mendelssohn’s “kid glove gentility.” In 1847, Prince Albert had lionized Mendelssohn as a prophetic artist-priest contending with false artistic idols; now, toward the end of the century, Shaw reversed

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