WORK OF THE WEEK – ERWIN SCHULHOFF: H.M.S. ROYAL OAKS

23 Aug 2022

Mutiny on the H.M.S. Royal Oaks! A foolish admiral forbids his sailors to play jazz, but the result is unexpected: The sailors refuse the order, and the admiral is court-martialled and demoted. Music is victorious! This story, based on true events, forms the basis for the libretto of the jazz oratorio H.M.S. Royal Oaks by Erwin Schulhoff. The reduced version of the work was premiered on 18 August 2022, the 80th anniversary of Schulhoff's death, as part of the "Terezín Music Academy" in Prague. EchoSpore Chamber Ensemble did the honours, under the musical direction of Werner Dickel.

An Oratorio between Jazz and Art Music

Erwin Schulhoff's H.M.S. Royal Oaks

Recitatives, choruses, a hallelujah at the end - seemingly a typical oratorio? Not only in the outlandish plot does it become clear that Schulhoff's H.M.S. Royal Oaks defies all notions of religious musical traditions. Even the initial bars propose a work that leads the genre on new paths: sounds of jazz accompany spoken word, combined with sometimes sharp dissonances of modern art music. The instrumentation chosen by Schulhoff, and also used in Frank Engel's reduced version, is reminiscent of the jazz bands in the big cities of the Weimar era (1918 to 1933) with its strong focus on brass and an ever-present saxophone. Not just a musical mirror of this unstable political period, H.M.S. Royal Oaks also represents a social uprising:

Here, jazz reaches past the defiant music that wants to disturb well-behaved citizens and challenge their understanding of manners and morals, becoming a musical symbol of the socially disadvantaged who demand their right to a better "wage". Miriam Weiss, musicologist

Only a few years after the premiere of H.M.S. Royal Oaks, the work fell victim to the backward ideology of the National Socialist cultural propaganda, and subsequent performances were terminated. Today, the oratorio is being reborn by various ensembles, most recently the EchoSpore Chamber Ensemble.