Angel Scene (Hänsel and Gretel)

Today, October 2nd, is the day that the Church commemorates the Holy Guardian Angels. This seemed like the perfect time to upload this, which I've had for years, but never bothered to learn.

Engelbert Humperdinck (1 September 1854 – 27 September 1921) was a German composer, best known for his opera Hänsel und Gretel. After receiving piano lessons, Humperdinck produced his first composition at the age of seven. He began taking music classes under Ferdinand Hiller and Isidor Seiss at the Cologne Conservatory in 1872. In 1876, he won a scholarship that enabled him to go to Munich, where he studied with Franz Lachner and later with Josef Rheinberger. He went to Italy and became acquainted with Richard Wagner in Naples. Wagner invited him to join him in Bayreuth and during 1880 and 1881 Humperdinck assisted in the production of Parsifal.

Humperdinck's reputation rests chiefly on his opera "Hänsel and Gretel", which he began work on in Frankfurt in 1890. The opera premiered in Weimar on 23 December 1893, under the baton of Richard Strauss, who called it: "a masterpiece of the highest quality... all of it original, new, and so authentically German." With its highly original synthesis of Wagnerian techniques and traditional German folk songs, Hänsel und Gretel was an instant and overwhelming success.

This transcription for organ was done by Francis G. Walker, and published by J. B. Cramer & Co. in 1973. In the transcription, it is entitled "Angel Scene", so this may be a "combination" of two movements. In the "Angel Scene" 14 angels descend to guard Hänsel and Gretel as they sleep in the forest. As it turns out, by legend, these "angels" are a are a group of collectively venerated saints in Roman Catholicism.