Das verwehrte Opfer

The biblical cantata "Abraham and Isaac", a work about the power of faith, is about the Old Testament father who is willing to sacrifice his only son on divine instruction. If Stravinsky's late setting is probably his most difficult work to access, this is less due to the material, which has repeatedly caused offence throughout the centuries, than to the musical realisation. In its compositional density, its extreme reduction of means and apparent lack of emotion, it adequately renders the Genesis text. This sober austerity becomes even clearer in comparison with the immediately preceding work about the Flood. The text, which mixes different styles, is matched here by completely different music: full of variety, rich in vivid symbols. Both works are linked by Stravinsky's own approach to the twelve-tone technique, in which independent hexachords appear on an equal footing with the whole rows or push them into the background.