Program Braunschweig

directed by Douglas Lawrence AM
Acknowledgement of Country
The Australian Chamber Choir rehearses in Melbourne,
on the land of the Kulin nation. We acknowledge the
Wurundjeri people as the traditional custodians of this
land. We pay our respects to all Australian Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples and to their Elders past,
present and emerging.

ACC INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR:
DUNKELD
MIDDLE PARK
(MELBOURNE)
KOKSIJDE
BONN
BRAUNSCHWEIG
BERLIN
NÖRDLINGEN
8 June at 3 pm
Sterling Place Community Centre
14 Sterling St, Dunkeld, VIC,
Australia
16 June at 3 pm
Our Lady of Mount Carmel
210 Richardson St, Middle Park,
VIC, Australia
1 July at 8 pm Our Lady of the Dunes
Church, Flanders International
Summer Organ Festival
Kerkplein 2, Koksijde, Belgium
4 July at 8 pm Bonn Cathedral
(Münster)
Münsterplatz, Bonn, Germany
5 July at 7 pm St-Andreas-Kirche
An d.Andreaskirche 1,
Braunschweig, Germany
7 July at 10 am Berlin Cathedral. The
ACC is the guest choir at the
Sunday morning service.
Am Lustgarten, Berlin, Germany
9 July at 7 pm Georgskirche
Marktplatz, 86720 Nördlingen,
Germany
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SOLLN
11 July at 7:30 PM Apostelkirche
(MUNICH) Konrad-Witz-Straße 17,
Munich-Solln, Germany
VILLACH
VENICE
VENICE
12 July at 8 PM St Jakob, Oberer
Kirchplatz 9, Villach, Austria
13 July at 5.45 PM San Marco
The ACC is the guest choir at the
Service of Evening Prayer
Basilica di San Marco,
Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy
16 July Palazzo Pisani (private event)
San Marco, Venice, Italy
CASLANO
17 July at 8:30 PM
(LUGANO/CERESIO) Chiesa di San Cristoforo, Caslano
Ceresio Summer
Via Chiesa 4, 6987 Caslano,
Switzerland
DARMSTADT
MACEDON
ON ACCess from
20 July at 8 PM Pauluskirche
International Summer Organ
Festival
Paulusplatz, Niebergallweg,
Darmstadt, Germany
17 August at 3 PM Church of the
Resurrection, cnr Mt Macedon Rd
& Honour Av, Macedon, VIC,
Australia
17 August WATCH ON DEMAND
3

Cornelis De Jode Map (c.1593),
recognised as the first map of
Australia, with fantasy
illustrations
A definition of ‘Australian’
Broadly standardising the
responses in relation to ancestry
from Australia’s 2021 census,
Australian residents identify their
origins as 57.2% Anglo-European,
33.7% Australian (including 3.8%
Indigenous), 17.4% Asian, 3.2%
North African and Middle
Eastern, 1.4% Peoples of the
Americas and 1.3% Sub-Saharan
African. (Some residents identify
with two ancestry groups.)
This program could be seen as
reflecting Australian society, in
that it demonstrates a melting
pot of cultural influences: European, Asian and
Indigenous.
PROGRAM
TWO RENAISSANCE MOTETS
GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA (1566–1613)
Tu es Petrus
GIOVANNI GABRIELI (1554–1612)
Jubilate Deo
4

THREE WORKS OF OUR TIME
GORDON KERRY (born 1961)
Alchemy: A setting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXXIII
CHRISTINE MCCOMBE (born 1967)
Power in Stillness
ROBIN ESTRADA (born 1970)
Aire de Nocturno – I am afraid of the dead leaves
CHARLES VILLIERS STANFORD (1852–1924)
Magnificat for double chorus, op.164
FRANK MARTIN (1890–1974)
Songs of Ariel, nos. 1-3
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225
PROGRAM NOTES
TWO RENAISSANCE MOTETS
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, TU ES PETRUS
Born in Palestrina (near Rome), between 3 February 1525
and 2 February 1526; died in Rome, 2 February 1594
The text of this Motet by Palestrina includes the line, as
reported by Matthew (16:19) in which Jesus says to Peter,
‘I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven’. This
same text was the inspiration for Pietro Perugino’s
painting Delivery of the Keys (shown on the cover of the
ACC’s new CD, below), painted on the northern wall of
5

the newly completed Sistine Chapel in 1481. Giovanni
Pierluigi da Palestrina was appointed Master of the
Capella Giulia (then the choir of the Sistine Chapel) in 1551.
He was, no doubt, inspired by Perugino’s fresco when he
composed this motet.
This new CD, Keys to Heaven,
begins with the first recording of
music by an orphan of Venice’s
Ospedale della Pietà. Agatha’s
Cantata, Ecce nunc, is followed
by Palestrina’s Tu es Petrus, from
today’s program, and Allegri’s
Miserere and Christus resurgens.
‘There are days when something of heaven seems to
touch the earth,’ said presenter Stefan Wegener of the
ACC’s first performance at Berlin’s Kaiser-Wilhelm-
Gedächtniskirche in 2007. Perhaps the rapturous
concord of Palestrina’s musical offerings acts as an ideal
conduit between earthly and heavenly spheres. Indeed,
one might enlist the words ‘purity’, ‘clarity’, and ‘ringing’
to describe Palestrina’s sonic excess in the hands of
capable musicians. Equal in popularity to the Missa Papae
Marcelli and motet Sicut cervus, Palestrina’s Tu es Petrus
exhibits stylistic hallmarks of the ‘Palestrina style’,
characterised by forward momentum, scalic motion,
alternating ensemble entries, and singable phrase
6

PALESTRINA
lengths. The intelligibility of text is central to this music:
natural word stresses, a steady pace of declamation, and
interlinking poetic fragments serve to emphasise a
central message rather than muddy the soundscape. In
the motet, listen for clearly defined ascending lines to
the text ‘and I will give you the keys to heaven’ (et tibi
dabo claves regni caelorum), perhaps pictorialising the
pursuit of heaven. Yet, this master’s textual efficacy
manifests not only in surface-level text expression, but
equally through the thoughtful organisation of structural
elements. Consider, for example, the symbolism of the
Holy Trinity through three iterations of a stanza, three
overarching structural divisions, and three-part vocal
sonorities. These intertwining three-voice clusters
ultimately yield to a thicker six-voice texture in the
closing phrases to represent heaven in all its splendour.
Tu es Petrus, et super hanc
petram aedificabo
ecclesiam meam,
et portae inferi
non praevalebunt
adversus eam:
et tibi dabo
claves regni
caelorum.
© Leighton HG Triplow, 2019
Thou art Peter, and upon
this rock I will build
my church;
and the gates of hell
shall not prevail
against it:
and I will give unto thee
the keys of the kingdom of
heaven.
7

PALESTRINA
Quodcumque ligaveris
super terram,
erit ligatum et in caelis.
Et quodcumque solveris
super terram,
erit solutum et in caelis.
Et tibi dabo
claves regni
caelorum.
And whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth,
shall be bound in heaven:
and whatsoever thou shalt
loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.
And I will give unto thee
the keys of the kingdom of
heaven.
Matthew 16:18–19 (King James)
Giovanni Gabrieli, JUBILATE DEO
Born in Venice, circa 1557; died in Venice, 12 August 1612
‘Ye immortal gods, what a man!’ raved Heinrich Schütz,
remembering his former teacher, Giovanni Gabrieli. He
built on the musical foundations which his uncle and
fellow Venetian Andrea had left, with awe-inspiring
results. Unlike Monteverdi (and indeed, unlike Schuẗz), he
was not wholly forgotten before 1900. Printed editions of
his choral and instrumental works first emerged from
German outlets as early as the mid- nineteenth century.
Yet it took the advent of stereophonic recorded sound
during the late 1950s and early 1960s for the average
music-lover to discern the inventiveness which Giovanni
Gabrieli showed in cultivating and refining polychoral
techniques.
©Robert James Stove
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GABRIELI
Jubilate Deo
omnis terra,
quia sic benedicetur homo
qui timet Dominum.
Jubilate Deo
omnis terra.
Deus Israel conjungat
vos et ipse sit vobiscum.
Mittat vobis auxilium
de sancto,
et de Sion
tueatur vos.
Jubilate Deo
omnis terra.
Benedicat vobis Dominus
ex Sion, qui fecit
caelum et terram.
Jubilate Deo
omnis terra.
Servite Domino
in laetitia.
O be joyful in the Lord
all ye lands,
for so shall he be blessed
that fears the Lord.
O be joyful in the Lord
all ye lands.
May the God of Israel unite
you and be with you.
May He send thee help
from the sanctuary,
and strengthen thee
out of Sion.
O be joyful in the Lord
all ye lands.
The Lord who made
heaven and earth give
thee blessing out of Sion.
O be joyful in the Lord
all ye lands.
Serve the Lord
with gladness.
THREE WORKS OF OUR TIME
Gordon Kerry, ALCHEMY
Born in Melbourne, 1961
Gordon Kerry studied at the University of Melbourne,
during which time he sang in the Choir of Ormond College
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KERRY
under the direction of Douglas Lawrence. Kerry carries
out not one but two important functions in recent
Australian music: as a composer of it, and as a historian of
it. In the latter role, his 2009 volume New Classical Music:
Composing Australia would of itself have sufficed to
leave his mark on antipodean culture. In the former role –
which has included employment as composer-inresidence
for Musica Viva – he has been exceptionally
prolific and much performed. He has to his credit, inter
alia, a clarinet concerto, a violin concerto, a viola
concerto, a flute concerto, two piano sonatas, and
several stage works (notably the operas Medea and The
Snow Queen). On a smaller scale than these pieces is
Christchurch Monody, written in mourning for the 2019
New Zealand terrorist attack’s victims, and recently
recorded for Melbourne’s Move label by the Marais
Project.
Alchemy was commissioned by the Australian Chamber
Choir and its director, Douglas Lawrence, with the
generous support of Mary-Jane Gething. The work is
dedicated to the ACC’s Manager, Elizabeth Anderson.
Kerry has this to say about the text:
Shakespeare's 33rd Sonnet is, according to some
scholars, addressed to the 'Fair Youth' with whom the
poet seems to have been in love, and depicts the glory
of the young man's presence, the poet's sadness at
their separation, and the realisation – the real alchemy
10

KERRY
of the poem – that love abides. Others hold the view
that the 'sun' is Shakespeare's son, Hamnet, who died
at the age of eleven (metaphorically 'but one hour') but
whose love abides in the poet's memory.
© Robert James Stove, 2022
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace;
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain
when heaven's sun staineth.
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Christine McCombe, POWER IN STILLNESS
Born in Rosebud, Victoria, 3 April 1967
12
This new CD, Gold, is a
compilation of Australian
choral music, including the
works heard today by
Gordon Kerry and
Christine McCombe. Also
featured are Brenton
Broadstock, Tom Henry,
Alan Holley, Stephen Leek,
Luke Speedy-Hutton and
Malcolm Williamson.
Christine McCombe studied at the University of
Melbourne, during which time she sang in the Choir of
Ormond College under the direction of Douglas
Lawrence.
After studies with James McMillan at the Royal Scottish
Academy of Music and Drama, she went on to complete a
PhD in composition at the University of Edinburgh.
Composition prizes and awards include the Dorian Le
Gallienne Composition Award, the Lyrebird Music
Society Composition Prize, a Keith and Elisabeth
Murdoch Fellowship, a Centre Acanthes (France) Bursary,
a Bundanoon Artists Trust Residency and, most recently,
the 2018 Pythia Prize. Her compositions have been

McCOMBE
performed by ensembles including the BBC Scottish
Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Piano Trio, Topology
Ensemble, Australia Ensemble and the Australian
Chamber Choir. Recent performances of her works have
taken place in the Resonant Bodies Festival (New York),
the National Gallery of Victoria and the Melbourne
Recital Centre. A CD of her chamber music, entitled
Three kinds of silence, was released on the Tall Poppies
label in 2018.
Power in Stillness was commissioned by the ACC in 2020
with support from Modest Expectations. The work was to
be performed by the ACC as part of their 2021 European
tour, which was cancelled due to COVID restrictions.
McCombe explains the origins of her new work (for
which, in August 2020, she wrote the text) as follows:
I composed Power in Stillness during the COVID
lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, while navigating the
reality of having two teenagers at home attempting
school and a husband in the next room attempting to
teach high school English remotely. I remember
feeling that time itself had taken on a strange quality.
There were long pauses, a lot of waiting, a lot of time
to sit and think and just be. As a family we spent a lot
of time together in the same place, and daily ‘mental
health walks’ became a necessity. We live near a
hidden gem of a creek – Edgars Creek – that snakes
quietly through some of Melbourne’s northern
13

McCOMBE
suburbs, the land of the Wurundjeri / Woi Wurrung
people. Many of my walks would be along this creek,
through the quiet groves of eucalypts, past rocky
escarpments, listening to the quiet, the waters gently
passing over mossy rocks, the native birds, particularly
the kookaburras. It was time to breathe, to listen, to
feel the ground under my feet, to spend time with
trees and the feeling of slowness they evoke, the
sense of connection to the land and the land’s history
reaching back before European voices were heard
here. I loved these walks: the connection with stillness
and the land, listening with my whole body. The
concept of listening to the land, ‘Deep Listening’, is as
old as the land itself. It reminds me of the immense
wisdom and knowledge of First Nations peoples, it
reminds me to be humble and grateful. In composing
Power in Stillness, I sought to evoke these qualities of
stillness, of listening to the ‘spaces between’, and also
reflect on the concepts of isolation and
connectedness that the various lockdowns seemed to
bring into focus.
14

McCOMBE
There is a power
In stillness
In silence
In waiting
Looking up to the sky
Feeling the earth below
Standing in awe
And silence
Listening
There is a power…
Listening
To the spaces between trees
As we stand
And breathe
Finding the quiet within
There is a power…
Remembering
That we can stand alone
And still be connected
Like the quiet language of trees
Beneath the surface
Their roots entwined
Reaching out and holding strong
There is a power…
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McCOMBE
16
EXPLORE 2024 PROGRAMS
Robin Estrada, AIRE DE NOCTURNO
Born in Manila, 1970
Robin Estrada’s works have been described as bold and
innovative, melding Western forms with Southeast Asian
music traditions and accentuating the finesse and fire of
the region’s cultural diversity.
A Quimson Fellow of the Asian Cultural Council and a
Philippine National Commission for Culture and the Arts
(NAMCYA) scholarship grant awardee, Estrada also
received the Hoefer Commissioning Prize as well as
the Choral Composition Contest First Prize for Aire de
Nocturno from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music,
the Nicola di Lorenzo Prize and the Concurso Coral
de Ateneo Musica Nova Award.
Estrada received degrees from the University of
California–Berkeley (PhD, MA), San Francisco
Conservatory of Music (MM), University of the
Philippines (BMus.), and Ateneo de Manila (AB); working
with composers Cindy Cox, Ed Campion, Dan Becker,
David Conte, Josefino Toledo, and Philippine National
Artists José Maceda and Ramon P. Santos. Commissions
and performances include those by notable ensembles
including Volti, International Orange Chorale, Piedmont
East Bay Children's Choir, San Francisco Choral Artists,
Empyrean Ensemble, Del Sol String Quartet, UP
Symphony Orchestra, Kuwerdas Filipinos Symphonic
Rondalla, Ateneo Chamber Singers, Aleron, Philippine

ESTRADA
EXPLORE 2024 PROGRAMS
Madrigal Singers, AUIT Chamber Vocal Ensemble and the
Australian Chamber Choir.
The present piece, originally intended for the San
Francisco Conservatory Chorus and its conductor David
Conte, uses the opening lines – both in the original and in
an English translation – of a much-anthologised verse by
Spain’s best-known twentieth-century writer: poet and
dramatist Federico García Lorca, who was executed in
1936 due to his stand against Franco.
© Robert James Stove, 2015
Tengo mucho miedo de las
hojas muertas, miedo de
los prados llenos de rocío.
Yo voy a dormirme;
si no me despiertas,
dejaré a tu lado mi corazón
frío. Translation © Catherine Brown
I am afraid of
dead leaves, of
the fields filled with dew.
I will sleep now,
and if you don’t wake me,
I will leave my cold heart
by your side.
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, MAGNIFICAT for double
choir, op. 164
Born in Dublin, 30 September 1852; died in London, 29
March 1924
Stanford was nothing if not versatile. In his teaching, he
often showed considerable ruthlessness but earned
invariable respect. He numbered among his students
Holst, Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Frank Bridge,
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STANFORD
Ivor Gurney, John Ireland, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and
almost every other musician of note in England during the
two decades before 1914. (One unfortunate pupil’s
efforts he dismissed, in the Hibernian brogue which he
cultivated to the end, as ‘All Brahms and water, me bhoy!
And more water than Brahms!’) Meanwhile, in his
composing, he contributed to every main genre. His huge
list of works includes eleven operas (none of which
achieved any commercial success), seven symphonies,
concertos for various instruments, eight string quartets,
and quantities of sacred music. In the last-named
category Stanford, like Byrd more than three hundred
years earlier, handled Latin and English texts with equal
assurance. The Latin Magnificat in this concert comes
from late in Stanford’s life. It calls for double choir (eight
parts in total) and was intended as a funerary tribute to Sir
Hubert Parry. As a young man, Stanford had been
prominent (as had Parry) in reviving Bach’s choral output;
and even if we did not know as much from his
biographers, this Magnificat would confirm it. He must
have had in mind Bach’s setting of the opening words – in
a similar, moderately paced triple time – when he
produced the initial bars of his own. The whole piece is
ornate and profound, testifying to Stanford’s always
formidable expertise at handling massed voices without
conveying the slightest hint of creative strain. In 1985
Garret FitzGerald, then Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach),
18

STANFORD
gave permission for Stanford’s portrait to appear on a
postage stamp. © Robert James Stove, 2014
Magnificat anima mea
Dominum;
et exsultavit spiritus meus
in Deo salutari meo,
quia respexit
humilitatem
ancillae suae;
Ecce enim ex
hoc beatam me dicent
omnes generationes.
Quia fecit mihi magna,
qui potens est,
et sanctum nomen eius,
Et misericordia a progenie
in progenies
timentibus eum.
Fecit potentiam
in brachio suo;
dispersit
superbos mente
cordis sui.
Deposuit potentes
de sede,
et exaltavit
humiles;
My soul doth magnify the
Lord,
and my spirit hath rejoiced
in God my Saviour.
For He hath regarded the
lowliness
of His handmaiden;
for behold, from
henceforth all generations
shall call me blessed.
For He that is mighty
hath done great things for
me, and holy is His name.
And His mercy is on them
that fear Him throughout
all generations.
He hath shown strength
with His arm;
He hath scattered the
proud in the imagination of
their hearts.
He hath put down the
mighty from their seat,
and hath exalted the
humble and meek.
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STANFORD
esurientes implevit
bonis
et divites dimisit
inanes.
Suscepit Israel puerum
suum, recordatus
misericordiae suae,
sicut locutus est
ad patres nostros,
Abraham et semini eius
in saecula.
Gloria Patri,
et Filio,
et Spiritui Sancto,
sicut erat in principio,
et nunc, et semper:
et in saecula saeculorum.
Amen.
He hath filled the hungry
with good things
and the rich He hath sent
empty away.
Remembering His mercy,
He hath holpen His servant
Israel.
As He promised to our
forefathers,
Abraham and his seed
forever.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost:
as it was in the beginning,
is now and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
Frank Martin, FIVE ARIEL SONGS, nos. 1-3
with texts from Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Born in Geneva, 15 September 1890; died in Naarden, 21
November 1974
Shakespeare’s The Tempest has proven to be a rich
starting point for many composers, with close to fifty
operas having been based on it, and a huge range of
other orchestral and vocal music. The play includes a
20

MARTIN
number of songs as well as being lyrical in its spoken
poetry, and many song settings have been commissioned
for use in the theatre. Two of the original settings from
Shakespeare’s day still survive. But it is also the play itself
– the chaos and disorientation into which its shipwrecked
characters are plunged, and the fantastical creatures
who inhabit the desert island on which they wander – that
offers such scope to musical and theatrical imagination.
Drawing on both French and German influences, notably
the serialism of Arnold Schönberg, the Swiss composer
Frank Martin developed his own musical style: highly
expressive and formally abstract at the same time.
© Alma Ryrie-Jones, 2017
The sinuous opening alto and tenor duet of ‘Come unto
these yellow sands’ casts Ariel as sea-nymph, calming
the stormy waters. Yet we are reminded that all is not
well here: the basses, with their low, distant calls of
‘Bow-wow’, foreshadow the sea-sprites' animalistic
refrain (‘burthen’) to come. There is a brief interlude as all
voices ‘foot it featly’ in a syncopated, dance-like
passage, before the sprites take over, chorusing as if
barking dogs. Solo sopranos crow the high, plaintive
chanticleer's cry, answered gruffly in the lower voices.
© Alex Hedt, 2024
‘Full fathom five’ begins with interweaving lines sung by
the sopranos and altos on an octatonic scale, a scale of
eight notes arranged in alternating tones and semitones.
This creates strange and beautiful harmonies, perfectly
21

MARTIN
evoking the underwater forest of which the invisible spirit
speaks. At the point of describing a ‘sea-change’, a
phrase still with us today, there is a complete
transformation – the texture of the music becomes
entirely chordal for the first time and the chord changes
are dazzling and unexpected.
Steve Hodgson, an occasional ACC member who has also
conducted the work, says:
I fell in love with this piece. Navigating the octatonic
pitch is difficult – choristers are used to singing in
major and minor keys with seven notes, not eight! And
between the chord changes and the constant
swapping of places in the underlying harmony – it’s a
wonderfully challenging and beautiful piece to sing.
© Alma Ryrie-Jones, 2017
In contrast to the slowly-building atmosphere of ‘Full
fathom five’, ‘Before you can say “come” and “go”’
begins with turbulent, virtuosic conversation between
the voices, each echoing the line of text sung by the
previous voice before beginning the next. The watery
theme of Martin’s cycle is again evident in the third line
of this song, where chromaticism in the lower voices
provides mysterious contrast to more sustained notes
and continued conversation in the upper parts. The busyness
of the majority of this song serves to dramatically
highlight its final line, where the voices all meet in a
startlingly stransparent homophonic texture to quietly
22

MARTIN
ask its ultimate question – though its answer never
comes. © Leighton HG Triplow, 2023
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands;
Curtsied when you have, and kissed,
The wild waves whist:
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark! Bow-wow,
The watch dogs bark, bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear,
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry cock a diddle dow.
Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, - ding-dong, bell.
Before you can say, ‘come’ and ‘go’,
And breathe twice, and cry ‘So, so’,
Each one, tripping on his toe,
Will be here with mop and mow.
Do you love me, master? no?
23

Johann Sebastian Bach, SINGET DEM HERRN EIN NEUES
LIED for two four-part choirs, BWV 228
Born in Eisenach, Germany, 31 March 1685; died in Leipzig,
28 July 1750
Bach scholars have tentatively attributed this motet to
the 1727 funeral of Christiane Eberhardine, the Lutheran
Electress of Saxony, who – although titular Polish queen –
found Catholic Poland so uncongenial a country that she
refused even to visit it, let alone to live in it. (Her funeral
indubitably elicited from Bach his famous Trauerode,
BWV 198.) Singet dem Herrn incorporates in its outer
movements various lines from Psalms 149 and 150 in the
standard Lutheran Bible. These lines have nothing selfevidently
mournful about them, quite the reverse. By
contrast, the motet’s central movement sets verses from
the sixteenth-century Lutheran poet Johann Grauman,
alias Johannes Poliander; and these words demonstrate a
much more explicitly sorrowful tone, what with their
unmistakable memento mori in such images as mown
grass being dispersed by the wind. On the thirty-threeyear-old
Mozart, when he visited Leipzig in 1789, Singet
dem Herrn left a powerful impression. (He could well
have borne its counterpoint in mind when he came to
write the Jupiter Symphony’s finale.) Despite, or because
of, the fact that Mozart had not hitherto experienced
much of Bach’s music in performance – what little he
knew of it had come chiefly from score-reading – he
found the motet revelatory. Herewith, the eyewitness

BACH
account of this occasion by critic Johann Friedrich
Rochlitz, in 1789 a Thomasschule theology student:
Hardly had the choir sung a few measures when
Mozart sat up, startled; a few measures more and he
called out: ‘What is this?’ And now his whole soul
seemed to be in his ears. When the singing was
finished he cried out, full of joy: ‘Now, there is
something one can learn from!’
© Robert James Stove
Singet dem Herrn ein
neues Lied,
Die Gemeine der Heiligen
sollen ihn loben.
Israel freue sich des,
der ihn gemacht hat.
Die Kinder Zion sei’n
fröhlich über ihrem
Könige; Sie sollen loben
seinen Namen im
Reigen; mit Pauken und
mit Harfen sollen sie ihm
spielen.
Sing ye to the Lord a
new song;
the assembly of saints
should be telling His
praises. Israel, be joyful in
Him who hath made thee.
Let Zion’s children rejoice
in Him who is their mighty
king; let them be praising
His name’s honour in
dances; with timbrels and
with psalteries unto Him
be playing.
Wie sich ein Vater
erbarmet Gott,
nimm dich ferner unser an,
Über seine junge
As does a father
mercy show
to his own
dear little children,
25

BACH
Kinderlein, so tut der Herr
uns allen, so wir ihn
kindlich fürchten rein.
Er kennt das arm
Gemächte,
Gott weiß, wir sind
nur Staub,
denn ohne dich ist nichts
getan mit allen unsern
Sachen;
gleichwie das Gras vom
Rechen,
ein Blum und fallend Laub.
Der Wind nur drüber
wehet, so ist es nicht mehr
da, drum sei du unser
Schirm und Licht,
und trügt uns unsre
Hoffnung nicht, so wirst
du’s ferner machen.
Also der Mensch
vergehet,
sein End, das ist ihm nah.
Wohl dem, der sich nur
steif und fest
auf dich und deine Huld
verlässt.
so doth the Lord to all of
us, if as pure children we
fear Him.
He sees our feeble
powers,
God knows we are
but dust;
for, lacking Thee, nought
shall we gain from all of
our endeavours.
Just as the grass in
mowing,
Or bud and falling leaf,
if wind but o’er it bloweth,
it is no longer
there, so be Thou our true
shield and light,
And if our hope betray us
not, Thou wilt thus
henceforth help us.
Even so is man’s
life passing,
His end to him is near.
Blest he whose hope, both
strong and firm,
on Thee and on Thy grace
can rest.
26

BACH
Lobet den Herrn in seinen
Taten, lobet ihn in seiner
grossen Herrlichkeit!
Alles, was Odem hat, lobe
den Herrn,
Halleluja!
Praise ye the Lord in all His
doings, praise ye Him in all
His might and majesty!
All things which have
breath, praise ye the Lord,
Halleluja!
You have been listening to
SOPRANO
Victoria Brown
Alex Hedt
Kristina Lang
Katherine Lieschke
Kate McBride*
Jennifer Wilson-Richter
ALTO
Elizabeth Anderson*
Neda Bizzarri
Melissa Lee
Katie Renner*
TENOR
Matthew Bennett
Will Carr
Joshua Lucena
Sam Rowe*
BASS
Thomas Drent*
Kieran Macfarlane
Tom Reid
Lucas Wilson-Richter*
*Denotes soloist
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