The Mount of Olives

With its magnificent, almost operatic music, Christus am Ölberge (The Mount of Olives) is a different ­Passion oratorio which is definitely worth hearing and ­experiencing – and in this form it is without doubt unique in the history of ­vocal-instrumental sacred music. In his Passion oratorio, Beethoven succeeded firstly in building on the 18th century tradition, and secondly in putting his own personal stamp on the nascent genre of German-language oratorio – the Vienna performances of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (The Creation) and Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) had only taken place a few years earlier. In composing the work he looked towards contemporary opera, using a text by an opera librettist to depict in music the dramatic situation of the doubting Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and his arrest in deeply-felt musical scenes.

The edition follows the first printed edition in music and text; differences in the text in the libretto originally set by Beethoven are given as a second text, and a singable English translation is underlaid.