Piano Excerpts

Eberlin's programmatic setting of the offertory "Terra tremuit" was composed for the festive liturgy of Easter Sunday at Salzburg Cathedral, which was a center of polyphonic offertory settings in the...

Giuseppe Verdi's Te Deum for double choir and large orchestra is the most frequently performed part of his Quattro pezzi sacri and his penultimate work, composed in 1895/1896. Verdi dealt intensively...

Among the sacred compositions by Carl Heinrich Graun, the long-serving court conductor of Frederick II in Berlin, two works have acquired a prominent status: the passion cantata Der Tod Jesu from 1755...

Bobbi Fischer's "Magnificat" builds a musical bridge between Europe and South America. His setting of Mary's song of praise from the Gospel of Luke draws on the abundance of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. We...

The Stabat Mater is Giuseppe Verdi's last work. The composer completed it in 1897 at the age of 84. A year later, the Stabat Mater appeared in print together with the slightly older Te Deum as part of...

The Requiem in F minor op. 146 is one of Franz Lachner's most important works. The composer, who lived in Vienna for a long time, developed into a "classicist romantic" there, merging classical form,...

Among Verdi's numerous compositions, the Messa da Requiem remains unique as a work of sacred music. It was composed as a musical memorial to the Italian national poet Alessandro Manzoni, whom Verdi de...

The Berlin choirmaster and music teacher Michael Betzner-Brandt is known as a particularly creative mind in the choral scene - for example through his "I can't sing" choirs. In order to be able to sin...

Gabriel Fauré's Requiem is the key work among the French master's sacred compositions. The work was already a success with the public during the composer's lifetime and remains so to this day. Due to...

A valuable addition to the requiem repertoire: Biber's Requiem in F minor is one of the most impressive settings of the requiem mass of the 17th century. The specific occasion for the composition of t...

Dvorák's great "Requiem" was commissioned for the renowned music festival in Birmingham. Since its premiere there under the composer's direction in 1891, it has enjoyed great popularity. It is based o...

The British composer Grayston (Bill) Ives (*1948) has dedicated himself to choral music in many different ways. He was a tenor with the legendary King's Singers and later worked for 18 years as an org...

Puccini's first known work of church music was composed during his school days at the "Istituto Pacini" in Lucca and was premiered there in 1877; he chose a Latin hymn to the patron saint of Lucca as...

Monteverdi's "Vespers of Mary" has found its way into today's musical practice like hardly any other work of the 17th century. However, the "Vespers of Mary" also presents us with many puzzles. The so...

Anyone who has Bruckner's symphonies and well-known great masses in their ears will be amazed when they hear his "Missa solemnis" from 1854: can the tradition of Viennese Classicism still be so clearl...

A mass composition by a young Viennese composer: in 1760, at the age of 16, Marianna von Martines (1744-1812) composed her "Seconda Messa". Just one year later, another mass from her pen was performed...

Missa latina is a complete Latin mass composition for solo soprano, large mixed choir (SATB with voice parts and choral solos) and a band consisting of violin, bandoneon (accordion), piano, double bas...

Sacrilege or a stroke of genius? The composer and Kapellmeister Gottlob Benedict Bierey (1772-1840) orchestrated the first movement of Beethoven's famous "Moonlight Sonata" for orchestra (transposed t...

The two poems by John Milton L'Allegro (Cheerfulness) and Il Pensieroso (Melancholy) describe the contrasts between these two moods. Charles Jennens used them to create a libretto, supplemented by the...

Johann Ernst Bach succeeded his father Johann Bernhard as organist in Eisenach and was later also appointed Court Kapellmeister. In his compositions, J. E. Bach reveals himself to be a spirit open to...

The cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern BWV 1 has become somewhat famous: With it, Bach's ambitious project of a choral cantata year came to an abrupt end on March 25, 1725 after around nine mo...

Bach composed "Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein" BWV 2 for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity in 1724 as the second cantata of the choral cantata year. It is based on Martin Luther's rewriting of the 12th P...

Bach composed the cantata "Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid" for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany in 1725; it is part of the choral cantata cycle. In the large-scale choral movement, a sorrowful choral mo...

The surviving parts for the cantata "Christ lag in Todes Banden" BWV 4.2 were used for a performance on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1725; this performance was presumably an emergency solution, as the chor...

Bach composed the choral cantata Wo soll ich fliehen hin BWV 5 for the 19th Sunday after Trinity in 1724. The cantata belongs to Bach's 2nd Leipzig year, the choral cantata year. The opening movement...