Cantata Profana

Cantata Profana (subtitled A kilenc csodaszarvas ["The Nine Enchanted Stags"], Sz 94) is a work for double mixed chorus and orchestra by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Completed on 8 September 1930, it received its premiere in London on 25 May 1934, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Wireless Chorus conducted by Aylmer Buesst. Tenor Trefor Jones and baritone Frank Phillips were the featured soloists. The work was presented in an English translation by M.D. Calvocoressi.

The source texts which Bartók used to create the libretto were two Romanian colinde that he collected from Transylvania in April 1914. Colinde are ballads which are sung during the Christmas season, although many colinde have no connection to the Christian Nativity and are believed to have their origin in pre-Christian times.

The story is of a father who has taught his nine sons only how to hunt, so they know nothing of work and spend all of their time in the forest. One day while hunting a large and beautiful stag, they cross a haunted bridge and are themselves transformed into stags. The distressed father takes his rifle and goes out in search of his missing sons. Finding a group of fine stags gathered around a spring, he drops to one knee and takes aim. The largest stag (eldest son) pleads with his father not to shoot. The father, recognizing his favorite son in the stag, begs his children to come home. The stag then replies that they can never come home: their antlers cannot pass through doorways and they can no longer drink from cups, only cool mountain springs. In an English translation created much later, Bartók retains the six-syllable versification of the original Romanian text. Below is Bartók's own translation of the text from the third movement:

Bartók translated the original Romanian into Hungarian and entrusted a German translation to Bence Szabolcsi. In 1955, Robert Shaw created a new English translation. The original Romanian text has not appeared in any of the published versions of Cantata Profana.

Cantata Profana is divided into three continuous movements: the first movement describes the hunt and the magic transformation, while the second movement recounts the father's search for his sons and his encounter with them. The third movement recapitulates the narrative. The overall ABA' structure exemplifies Bartók's use of palindromic, or arch, form.

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