Alwin Michael Schronen

Beim Schlafengehen

Touching, warm-hearted and reassuring - Alwin Michael Schronen's choral composition At bedtime for four-part mixed choir (SATB) a cappella can hardly be better characterized. The only about 2-minute setting of the eponymous three-strophic poem by Hermann Hesse breathes a tremendous simplicity and intimacy through which finds the text content of the resting-to-come of doing and thinking after a long day adequate expression. The very catchy and tunable melody is largely reserved for the soprano (stanzas 1 and 3), which is sensitively accompanied by the other voices. Only in the second stanza does the tenor take on the (slightly modified) melody, giving it a vivacious tone color nuance for this secluded agelong choir of secular a cappella choral music.