KuK-Art.com

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t must have been at the turn of the new century when I had a conversation with Jürgen Budday in the cloister of the Maulbronn monastery and talked of how superb the church was as a performing space and how its atmosphere might be put to use. By expanding the dimensions of the performance and incorporating the audience into the tension, the euphoria of the concert, without a single instrument – with the pure power of those human gifts that we receive from our Creator at the moment of birth. But you know, of the many demands that a project like this makes of those involved, I want to single out just one – the human factor, plain and simple.
When a group of people work together, it takes time to develop a certain intimacy, to acquire experience of working as a team – simply to establish respect and friendship. For, after more than ten productions, we have come to know “our Chamber Choir” very well, to realize what high demands the choir director and the singers make of themselves. All of them have worked hard for this live recording, on the concept as well as the music, just to capture the moment, to give you pleasure – and this over and above the daily demands of their private and professional lives. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated and leave it to the director to explain the content and concept of the programme in the section that follows.

Josef-Stefan Kindler, Publisher

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n this collection entitled “Der Mensch lebt und bestehet” (Man lives and exists), the Maulbronn Chamber Choir presents compositions that are interconnected in themselves and in content, in that they regard birth as more than just a joyful event. It is an act of creation, in which the divine and the human find each other and which implies earthly finiteness, but at the same time transcends this and leads back to its divine beginnings. This is how the prophetic words of the Old Testament are taken up, words that are substantiated in the annunciation to Mary of the incarnation of Christ (“Angelus Domini – Ave Maria”) and that lead into the events of Christmas (“Gloria” and “O magnum mysterium”). Yet at the same time, their central theme is the union of man with divine reality by means of reformation and contemplation (the “unio mystica”). Each life has a goal that transcends earthly finiteness, leading to what Reger calls that “hellen, schönen, lichten Tag, an dem er/sie selig werden mag" (that bright, beautiful, clear day when he or she blessed be).
In the “Ave Maria” by Franz Biebl (1906-2001), we find the current text of the Ave Maria surrounded by recitations in unison, in which the Angel of the Lord announces the coming birth of Jesus to Mary (cf. the Magnificat), culminating in the words of the Gospel according to St. John: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The motet is divided into two 3 and 4-part choirs. The sound has a romantic sonority with some surprising harmonic twists.
“A Hymn to the Virgin” by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), a composition for two choirs, is presented in a very similar vein. The text dates from about 1300 and praises Mary as a lovely, radiant, adorable maiden carrying the Son of God in her womb. Britten has set it to music that is basically archaic in mood and melody. The first choir sings the text in English and the second interpolates and comments on it in Latin.
One might well ask oneself with some astonishment what a composer could find so appealing about setting a family tree to music. In his motet “Which was the son of”, the minimalist composer Arvo Pärt (born 1935) succeeds most impressively in transposing the 77 (!!) names that comprise the family tree in Luke 3, 23-38. After a short introduction, he enumerates the names: very softly at first and in unison. Gradually, the movement grows in intensity, both in the number of voices and in its dynamics. Tonally, the composition reaches its climax in the middle section, when Luke enumerates the great progenitors, Jacob, Isaac and Abraham. An opulent five-voice male choir is followed by a homophonic choral movement with eight mixed voices, symbolising the significance and greatness of these men. This is imitated in the subsequent movement, which is lighter and shifts the emphasis of the composition from the harmonic to the motoric, before the final phrase traces the entire family tree back to God in another glorious burst of sound. Throughout the entire composition, Pärt only uses harmonies that range between E minor and G major, with just the final “Amen” switching to a light E major.
The motet “O magnum mysterium” is the work of Morten Lauridsen (born 1943), an American composer of Danish origin. It speaks of the wonder of the birth of Jesus. Here, too, the “unio mystica“ is the theme of this composition, the union with the Divine through redemption and ecstatic contemplation.
Jan Sandström (born 1954) dedicates his “Gloria” to “la Casa de la Madre y el Niño” in Bogotá. The idea behind the composition came to Sandström in a dream, which he describes as follows: “In a church on a mountain high above Bogotá, a children’s choir sings the Gloria over and over again, during which first one child, then another and another steps forward to interject “Gloria in excelsis.” Sandström has incorporated this pattern of fast switches from choir to a single chorister into his composition – vibrant rhythm, detailed and delightful harmony combined with a sound that envelopes the listener from all sides, making listening a real experience.
“Ich bin das Brot des Lebens” (“I am the bread of life”), composed in 2001 by Wolfram Buchenberg (born 1962), is an eight-part motet that lives mainly from the confrontation between male and female voices. It is composed mainly to the text of Psalm 1 and verse 35 of the sixth chapter of John, and describes Christ the person as the basis and, indeed, the prerequisite for human existence. The piece begins in a very meditative vein and in part with tone clusters based on the five scales of D – E - F sharp - G sharp – A. Then the words of Christ ring out from the male choir – “I am the bread of life” – as if they come from another sphere, and in bold harmony. In the middle section, a short motif is given a rhythmic and melodic improvisation by the middle female voices, with each of the singers drifting apart in individual tempos. The composition then merges into an eight-part homophonic portrayal of the text and ends as it began.
The programme turns to the themes of transience and eternity with 3 Motets from Opus 138 by Max Reger (1873-1916). The choral compositions are homophonic and have a clarity about them that is otherwise only found in old A-cappella artistic renderings. This is seen in the way each voice is kept melodically independent as well as in the economy of chromatic notation. The movements have great tonal and expressive density and a wide range of expression. „Der Mensch lebt und bestehet nur eine kleine Zeit" (text: Matthias Claudius) is a motet written for two choirs - and it turned out to be of fateful relevance for Reger himself. At 11 p.m. on 10 May, 1916, he left the café where he had met up with the Thomaskantor, Karl Straube. The next morning, Reger was found dead at home in his bed. Open on the table were the galley proofs for the motet “Der Mensch lebt und bestehet nur eine kleine Zeit”.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) composed the 16-part “Hora est ” for four choirs in 1828 for the Singakademie in Berlin. The text is based on an antiphone and a Responsory from the Divine Office for the period of Advent. “It is time to rouse ourselves from sleep.” The piece opens in G minor with a male choir, followed by the lighter sound of higher voices singing the declamatory “Ecce apparebit” in D major as a contrast. The fugato that follows this is reminiscent of the final fugue in the Gloria from the Bach Mass in B minor (“Cum sancto spiritu”). What makes this composition particularly charming is the division between women’s choir, men’s choir and mixed choral groupings, all culminating in the exuberant and overwhelming sound of a 16-voice choir.
This programme is exceptional in that it includes choral works written for more than one choir. The effect of these compositions is heightened appreciably by positioning the various performers in different areas of the church, and they were, in fact, originally composed with this in mind. In the Biebl and Britten motets, we therefore experience a separate smaller choir singing far up in the gallery of the monastery church. Even the soloists in Sandström’s “Gloria” enhance the effect of the performing space by being positioned opposite the choir. The Reger motets also develop a unique sound of their own, due to mixed groupings of voices being placed extremely far apart throughout the entire area. In the Maulbronn Monastery church, the conditions are ideal for these innovate concepts of sound.

Jürgen Budday