Hansel and Gretel

“Before the year had passed, the work was in the repertory of every German opera house; also abroad its success was extraordinary and lasting”. The opera this quote refers to is, Hänsel und Gretel, written by Engelbert Humperdinck. Humperdinck is responsible for many operas in his lifetime, but the one he is most famous for is Hänsel und Gretel (1893). This paper will analyze Humperdinck’s inspiration for Hänsel und Gretel, and some of the techniques he used in Hänsel und Gretel. Engelbert Humperdinck was born September 1st, 1854 in Siegburg in the Rhineland, near Bonn, Germany. Until Humperdinck met Ferdinand Hiller he studied architecture, then Ferdinand saw his talent and took him as a student to the Cologne Conservatory. Humperdinck had the opportunity to go to Munich where he studied at the Royal School of Music after receiving many awards such as The Mozart Prize in 1876. Humperdinck also went on to win the Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer Prizes. All of these prizes enabled Humperdinck to visit Italy and France. It was Italy where he met Richard Wagner who invited him to be a guest at Bayreuth. During this time Humperdinck assisted Wagner in his score for Parsifal, helping prepare Parsifal for the stage. The time Humperdinck spent with Wagner appeared to have a great impact on his future works which will be discussed further on in this paper. After Wagner’s death in 1883 the German people believed the last great German opera had been written, which brought a wave of depression over opera in Germany. “The German public, weary of the bombast if the Wagner-imitators, were willing to accept the blunt realism of the Italian ‘verisimo’ as a relief from the labored dullness of it’s native composers.” Italian operas, such as Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, quickly gained world-wide attention seeming to take away the attention from the German people and their style of music. Audiences enjoyed watching this style of opera because they were easy to follow and did not cause any intellectual strain on them. It seemed to the German people that the Wagnerians had lost the battle, so to speak, and the new Italian style was what the world wanted. Then in 1893 “Hänsel und Gretel took the German people back once more into the beloved land of their national stories; and it was the work of a composer with a wholly German idiom and a masterly German technique.” Considering the time Hänsel und Gretel was produced and the feelings of the German people at this time, it appears that Hänsel und Gretel is a nationalistic opera. The original idea for Hänsel und Gretel was actually not Humperdinck’s, but his sister’s.
Humperdinck’s sister, Mrs. Adelheid Wette, was fond of writing little plays which her daughters acted at parties. On one occasion, she dramatized the old German nursery tale of a boy and girl who were lost in the forest. Mrs. Wette’s audience was delighted with the plucky pair and the strange adventures that befell them. Just as a diversion, Humperdinck set his sister’s play to music. He was so well pleased with the way it turned out, that he developed in into a grand opera. The main plot of Hänsel und Gretel is two children that get lost in the forest fall victim to the Little Sandman who puts them to sleep for hours. When they wake up they are trapped with the Witch who proceed to tell the, how she will fatten them up and eat them. Instead Hänsel and Gretel outwit the Witch and shove her into the oven instead. Finally the children return home to their father and mother. Hänsel und Gretel is a story adapted from one of Grimm’s Tales, Bruderchen und Schwesterchen (Little Brother and Little Sister). As Wette was writing the story she felt that many plot lines were too serious for her target audience and made some changes. Some changes she made were as simple as changing the father’s job from a wood cutter to a broom maker, while other changes had to do with the character’s personalities. For example, in Bruderchen und Schwesterchen, the mother appears to be an evil women ordering her husband to leave the children in the wood to be eaten by wild animals, where in Humperdinck’s version, Hänsel und Gretel, “the mother is made sympathetic, for she is not bad at heart, but only cross for the moment as worried mothers of lively children are justified in being.” Throughout Humperdinck’s career he was compared to Wagner for many reasons. As seen in example 1, in the prelude to Hänsel und Gretel, Humperdinck used simple four-part counterpoint, which has been described as similar to Wagner’s Mastersingers. Example 1: In this example you see how Humperdinck used simple contrasting melodies that are pleasing to the casual listener as well as the trained ear because in Hänsel und Gretel Humperdinck wanted to make music for children as well as adults to enjoy equally. Another technique seen in Humperdinck’s opera, Hänsel und Gretel, is his use of leitmotiv. For example, whenever the Witch is filled with an unholy joy, a theme called the Witches’ Ride is played (example 2). Example 2:

As seen here in this example, moving eighth notes, with dotted eighths followed by a sixteenth note, in a very staccato fashion is the leitmotiv for the Witches’ Ride. Another technique used by Humperdinck in Hänsel und Gretel, was his use of text painting. Example 3 is an excerpt from the beginning of Act III where we see the children nibbling at the Witch’s gingerbread house.

Example 3:

As seen in this example staccato eighth notes followed by accented quarter notes. This sharp rhythmic motive is a good example of Humperdinck’s use of text painting for two reasons. First, the quick staccato motion gives your ear the effect of the children nibbling on the gingerbread house, and second, in this scene Hänsel is the first to nibble on the gingerbread house followed by Gretel and that is portrayed with the horn, that sometimes can give off a boy-like sound, playing the motive first, and then followed by the oboe, that gives off a youthful girl sound in contrast. “All through the opera Humperdinck has been lavishing all the severest technical devices of composition on his music without ever letting the science interfere with the flow of his tune, and now he let’s himself go in a grand final effort.” The quotation refers to the children’s waltz near the end of the opera where Humperdinck overlaps many different motives heard throughout the opera in this ending song to almost wrap up the story as the children reflect on what has happened. Humperdinck’s opera, though at first was just to please his sister, turned into a nationalistic opera that Germany really needed at the time. Through his use of simple folk tunes and a well-loved story Humperdinck captured the attention of the world and even after his death his opera is performed to this day with the same fresh youthful feeling as at it’s first premiere.

Hänsel und Gretel
Bibliography

Baker, Theodore and Nicolas Slonimsky. Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. Fifth. ed. Completely Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York: G. Schirmer, 1958.

Humerdinck Engelbert. Hänsel und Gretel. Huntington Station, New York: Edwin F. Kalmus, 1895.

Jell, George Clarence. Master Builders of Opera. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933.

Lawrence, Robert and Engelbert Humperdinck. Haensel and Gretel: The Story of Humperdinck’s Opera. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1938.

Newman, Ernest. Stories of the Great Operas and Their Composers. Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Publications, 1930.

Outline

Introduction * Introduce Humperdinck * How the opera came about * Short summary of Opera
Analysis of the opera * Use of leitmotiv * Use of text painting * Use of overlapping motives
Conclusion
* Impact of the opera on the world

--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. Ibid.
[ 2 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 260.
[ 3 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 258.
[ 4 ]. Ibid.
[ 5 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 260.
[ 6 ]. Nicholas Slonimsky, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1958), 750.
[ 7 ]. George C. Jell, Master Builders of Opera (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), 200.
[ 8 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 262.
[ 9 ]. Nicholas Slonimsky, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1958), 750.
[ 10 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 262.
[ 11 ]. Ibid.
[ 12 ]. Ibid.
[ 13 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 263.
[ 14 ]. Robert Lawrence, Haensel and Gretel (The New York Metropolitan Opera Guild. Inc., 1938), 5.
[ 15 ]. Robert Lawrence, Haensel and Gretel (The New York Metropolitan Opera Guild. Inc., 1938), 6-39.
[ 16 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 264.
[ 17 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 264.
[ 18 ]. Ibid.
[ 19 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 267.
[ 20 ]. Engelbert Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel (Huntington Station, New York; Edwin F. Kalmus, 1895), 1.
[ 21 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 276.
[ 22 ]. Engelbert Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel (Huntington Station, New York: Edwin F. Kalmus, 1895), 205.
[ 23 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 280.
[ 24 ]. Engelbert Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel (Huntington Station, New York; Edwin F. Kalmus, 1895), 176.
[ 25 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 284.
[ 26 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 287.

Bibliography: Baker, Theodore and Nicolas Slonimsky. Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. Fifth. ed. Completely Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York: G. Schirmer, 1958. Humerdinck Engelbert. Hänsel und Gretel. Huntington Station, New York: Edwin F. Kalmus, 1895. Jell, George Clarence Lawrence, Robert and Engelbert Humperdinck. Haensel and Gretel: The Story of Humperdinck’s Opera. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1938. Newman, Ernest. Stories of the Great Operas and Their Composers. Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Publications, 1930. Outline [ 2 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 260. [ 3 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 258. [ 5 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 260. [ 6 ]. Nicholas Slonimsky, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1958), 750. [ 7 ]. George C. Jell, Master Builders of Opera (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), 200. [ 8 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 262. [ 9 ]. Nicholas Slonimsky, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1958), 750. [ 10 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 262. [ 13 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 263. [ 14 ]. Robert Lawrence, Haensel and Gretel (The New York Metropolitan Opera Guild. Inc., 1938), 5. [ 15 ]. Robert Lawrence, Haensel and Gretel (The New York Metropolitan Opera Guild. Inc., 1938), 6-39. [ 16 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 264. [ 17 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 264. [ 19 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 267. [ 20 ]. Engelbert Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel (Huntington Station, New York; Edwin F. Kalmus, 1895), 1. [ 21 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 276. [ 22 ]. Engelbert Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel (Huntington Station, New York: Edwin F. Kalmus, 1895), 205. [ 23 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 280. [ 24 ]. Engelbert Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel (Huntington Station, New York; Edwin F. Kalmus, 1895), 176. [ 25 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 284. [ 26 ]. Ernest Newman, Stories of the Great Operas And Their Composers (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1930), 287.