Jean-Féry Rebel: Les Elémens...

As many of you may be aware, my family enjoys and seeks out the uplifting influence of the Fine Arts for their highly cultivated ability to carry and effectively communicate weighty themes. Musically, this means that we favor what is referred to as “Classical Music.”

Last week, I featured an Oratorio composed by Franz Josef Haydn: The Creation. The text of this work is a directly Scriptural account of the Creation story, taken from the words of Genesis and Psalms, and following Milton's Paradise Lost in the manner in which the story is told. Interestingly, and typical of works from the Classical period, Haydn incorporates musical devices to reinforce the Creation account with observations of Natural Law. Not only on the basis of it's texts, or the superb artistic quality of its composition and performance, this work ought to be appreciated by true Christians specifically on the basis of the fact that it reverently affirms for those who hear it what the Scriptures say: that the God of Creation is real, that His Creation testifies of Him, and that the Creation account found in Special Revelation is the true account given to us by this Creator.

This week, I offer something similar, but different. Over fifty years prior to Haydn's The Creation, as the Baroque period was drawing to a close and burgeoning Enlightenment ideas were beginning to move artistic expression into the Classical period, an elderly French composer named Jean-Féry Rebel wrote a remarkable Suite for Orchestra entitled, Les Elémens – or, The Elements. Unlike Haydn's oratorio, this is not a choral work, but an orchestral work of distinctly Baroque composition and instrumentation, which makes use of these elements to tell the story of Creation. In addition, being primarily influenced by French Enlightment ideas, Rebel, unlike Haydn, did not even acknowledge which "god" was responsible for the Creation, but drew purely upon Natural Law as the inspiration for his work. The result is a late-Baroque orchestral work which expresses underlying Enlightenment ideas – which acknowledge a Creator, or an Intelligent Designer, on the basis of what Creation itself testifies. And testify it does, as the Scriptures clearly state (and I repeat from last week):

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things... (Rom. 1:18-23).

A particularly unique aspect of this work is the opening movement, entitled Le Cahos. This musical picture of chaos precedes the creative work of God, which in terms of Natural Law, is that event which, by the hand of a Divine architect and engineer, brought all things into being and set them in motion according the the Laws of Nature. That is, creation brought order to non-order, something which cannot happen spontaneously, nor evolve over time (all things tending to a state of greater disorder over time). Pre-creation, being the absence of order, could only be conceived of as chaos. And so the opening movement is titled "Chaos" (just as it is in Haydn's The Creation). The way that Rebel pictures chaos is two centuries ahead of his time:

After all the songs of house-trained birds, cats and frogs, all the battles fought according to the Queensberry rules, all the storms in teacups and manageably proportioned stage-earthquakes, with which late-Baroque composers threw their audiences into – it should be noted – commensurate states of astonishment, Jean-Féry Rebel's "cahos" from Les Elémens takes one's breath away, even today.

Goebel, R. (1995). Rebel: Les Elémens, Gluck: Alessandro & Telemann: Septet. Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon. (Liner notes, pg. 3).

Indeed, Rebel's Les Cahos, is taken straight from the pages of 20th Century Barbarism, and stands as an example of what dissonance truly represents: chaos, disorder, and uncertainty. And this is true not only of art, but in life from which art draws its inspiration and of which it is merely a shadowy image. God be praised for the miracle of Creation, for the power of His Word which, by its very speaking, brought order to chaos, brought out of nothing the existence of a fully functioning and mature Universe; which alone is able to give life to spiritually dead souls, to reconcile and restore harmony to man's relationship with God, to fill him with a certainty and conviction that chases away the dissonance of doubt, and to endow him confidence in his purpose -- to glorify God.