Pre-Order: Swr Vokalensemble – Masses For Double Choir

Rheinberger composed his Cantus Missae in 1878, during his tenure as court chapel master to King Ludwig II. The work bears witness to his successful reconciliation of the conflicting artistic currents of his time, and it is precisely this perfect equilibrium that has rendered it timeless. The Mass captivates with it’s melodic, often almost Lied like character; yet, on closer listening, the music reveals a striking modernity for it’s era.Nana Forte’s Libera me was written almost 150 years after Cantus Missae. It is a spiritual drama in which the composer draws on the traditional techniques of double choir writing: she let’s the choirs interlock contrapuntally or overlap in contrasting layers, as in the passage “tremens factus sum ego” (“trembling has overtaken me”).Frank Martin kept the manuscript of his Mass for Double Choir in a drawer for nearly forty years, regarding it as something solely between himself and God. In sound and musical language, the