The Power that Anton Bruckner Inspires in the Choralists

To talk about the impact and inspiration that the compositions of the Austrian musician Anton Bruckner produce in choir singers I think it is necessary to start this post listening to his Locus Iste as a musical background. I leave you here below this version of Tenebrae Choir that I found on youtube:

Beautiful, isn't it? This work was the letter of introduction of this composer in my life, the first one I knew and the first one that shook me for the great peace and holiness that it transmitted to me. In fact once being part of the Symphonic Choir of Aragua, the place where I come from and where I started in this choral world we had a trip to Coro, Falcon State, and to rest from the road we made a stop in some remote place of the roads that unite the Venezuelan states, by chance there was a beautiful chapel in the middle of nowhere, it was closed, but the priest was there and let us pass to that small temple.

There was so much peace in that remote place dedicated to God that we only thought of singing this music scattered in every corner; I tell it and it still makes my skin crawl, since it was the first time I felt the Power of Anton Bruckner in my life.... But despite so much beauty, it turns out that Locus Iste is totally detached from what is his choral repertoire 😵 one could say that it is the easiest piece of music for a choir and its plain sound I have not found in any of his striking romantic compositions. I don't know if you've finished listening to the previous video, but now I leave you with this Christus Factus Est, something closer to what I've really discovered Bruckner to be:

This version is by Jacobs Vokalensemble, they sound very good and yet it doesn't have the potential impact on me that singing in an ensemble of 100 people and where we are all student singers does. Although it is sacred music, it has all the components of the Romantic era and there is a lot of strength in the singing line, as well as important nuances that play between the fortes and the pianos. What stands out most about Bruckner's music is its complex harmony, whenever I read his scores I reach a point where I can't predict the notes that are coming and each tempo of the bar is a new surprise for me hahaha, I don't know if my colleagues feel the same way, but it's hard to read it at first sight without making a mistake.

This happens not only with the Christus Factus Est, but with most of Bruckner's music, taking out the first one I shared with you in the first video. Just now that we are putting together the concerts of an international tour that we will have in March, Bruckner's repertoire is present in our day to day, and it is usually one of the most complex to amalgamate and harmonize, but it is not impossible, we just have to be connected in the same frequency as we have achieved so many times in the passage. This piece and its Virga Jesse are sure repertoire for our next tour and perfect to demonstrate the level of our group on international stages.

I don't know if Anton Bruckner imagined the impact his choral compositions would have on the singers of this contemporary era, definitely all music has its magic and complexity. I love the simplicity of the renaissance and its extraordinary counterpoint, I love the elegance of the baroque and its magical interpretation, but the choral music of romanticism is made to sing to the fullest and free the voice with powerful singing lines; in fact I find it very difficult to sing Bruckner's tenor line, it is usually very sharp and I often bet for the baritone's melodic line, as you can hear it in the Virga Jesse above performed by UniversitätsChor München.

Well, it's time to say goodbye for today and of course I want to do it with one of our Bruckner interpretations. The strange thing is that the video I will share with you below from our official Youtube channel is not one of those compositions I have described in the paragraphs below, it is rather an Ave Maria with a quite predictable harmony, but still very complex to interpret because it is written for six voices, but it does feature powerful pianos and fortes during the whole sonorous journey. In this video you will see the girls singing on stage because they had just sung a light voice piece and then the dark voices came in through the audience entrances and we joined in singing from the aisles. It was a very special moment because we had the candles lit in our hands and we embraced the audience with our sound. We never sang it that way again, in the audio of the video the male voices feel very distant, it is something that worked live, but not for recordings...