Musings about David

“Was the Kingdom of David and Solomon a glorious empire—or just a little cow town?”  The National Geographic Magazine posed this provocative question in its December 2010 issue, and immediately gave the answer: “It depends on which archaeologist you ask.” 

by Jürgen Thym

Archaeology in the so-called Holy Land is indeed a hotly contested issue, as different religious groups consider certain locations sacrosanct that for others are “only” excavation sites to harvest a treasure trove of broken ancient pottery.  Sometimes Palestinians are displaced in order to allow digs, whose purpose is the advancement of Jewish territorial claims.  And Israeli archaeologists disagree on whether their findings are supportive of the stories written up in the books of Samuel, invoking a golden age of a unified Israel under King David (around 1010 B.C.E.) and King Solomon (who died in 930 B.C.E.) or whether they were just transitional figures to whom miraculous deeds were attributed long afterwards by writers with a particular political or religious agenda.  The current state of research suggests (and National Geographic is quite sobering in its assessment) that, despite decades of digging, the archaeologists have found “no solid evidence that David and Solomon ever built anything.”

David, a Judeo-Christian myth…

And yet, David is a reality, perhaps even more powerful than the historical figure who barely held together a group of unruly Hebrew tribes in Biblical times.  David is a myth, enshrined in the narratives of the Bible as an important cultural icon in the Judeo-Christian tradition. 

… and a man with shortcomings

David is a particularly poignant figure, whose personality and deeds are amply fleshed out by the writers of the Old Testament, and subsequently artists (writers, painters, sculptors, musicians) have flocked to him for inspiration; they have cast him in bronze or marble, drawn or painted him, and celebrated him with his music.  The accomplishments of Abraham and Moses may have been far greater than David’s: the former discovered God as being the one and only (and thereby became the founder of monotheism), the other’s Ten Commandments immeasurably advanced the cause of human civilization.  But depictions were far more frequent of David the Shepherd, who slew the giant Goliath with a simple pebble and led the Israelites to victory (a Punch-and-Judy story, as it were); or David the Harper, whose music failed to soothe the envy and murderous thoughts of Saul (a variant of the Orpheus myth, in a way); or David the Psalmist, whose poems give expression to trust in God (“The Lord is my Shepherd,” says the psalm) or to contrition and mourning over his moral failings.  And there is David the Magnanimous, who is generous to his enemies (his lamentation over the death of Absalom, his rebellious son, is heart-wrenching).  David is not just presented as a god-fearing and faultless king, a superb cunning and fearless military leader, or as an expressive poet-musician; he is also shown—warts and all—in his shortcomings, most importantly in the Bathsheba episode. 

No wonder that the rich and multifaceted tapestry in the story of David who ascended from shepherd to king, as well as the prophecies with which his off-spring were imbued, have attracted artists over centuries.  (The most famous of artworks, of course, is the giant sculpture carved out of white Carrara marble and housed in the Accademia Gallery in Florence, Italy.)

Mozart, Nielsen, Honegger

Of the numerous David compositions (Mozart’s cantata Davidde penitente and Carl Nielsen’s opera Saul and David come to mind), Arthur Honegger’s Le roi David (or King David) is probably the most frequently heard.  Composed in 1921 as incidental music for a play by René Morax (who had founded an open-air theatre festival before World War I on the shores of Lake Geneva near Lausanne, Switzerland), the music was recast two years later as an oratorio (Honegger called the work a “Symphonic Psalm”, perhaps inspiring Stravinsky a few years later to call his very different composition, also on Biblical texts, a Symphony of Psalms) for soloists, speakers, chorus, and orchestra.

Honegger’s music may be described as “neo-classical”: a style that, especially between the two world wars of the twentieth century, emerged as a reaction to the excesses of late Romanticism and Expressionism (Stravinsky is its most prominent representative).  The music is distinctly modern, but features borrowings from the music of the past and, perhaps, most important, presents sounds that are related to a key-center (even though it is a kind of tonality spiced up with dissonances and shifting tonal planes).

Honegger’s King David is an eminently dramatic work (the music’s origin as theatre music undeniably informs the concert version).  It consists of 27 short movements—only No. 16, the “Dance before the Ark” reaches symphonic lengths (and justifies the subtitle “Symphonic Psalm”)—which juxtapose a variety of moods appropriate to the unfolding narrative: In Part I from bucolic and pastoral (after all, David begins his career as a shepherd) to martial (battle scenes seem to be the adrenaline that propels the story forward) to victorious and triumphal; Part II is mainly ceremonial, celebrating David’s ascent to Kingdom and the height of his power; Part III ensues with lamentations and expressions of contrition, David’s death, and Solomon’s coronation.  Both Parts II and III conclude with fugal Halleluia choruses, celebrating the coronations of David and Solomon, respectively.  The music is, by and large, identical, but, at the end, a chorale tune is interwoven in the contrapuntal textures: “How bright appears the morning star”, thereby giving the story about the ascendance of a Jewish king a distinctly Christian sheen.