Four Lullabies for SATB-choir
(Vier Wiegenlieder für Gemischten Chor)

 These four short choral settings are in strict four-part style without any divisi passages. Direct in expression, they are designed to be sung a cappella by chamber choir and may even be performed by an SATB vocal quartet. The Four Lullabies  should make effective additions to a church service during the Christmas season but are intended as concert repertoire too. They may be given either singly or rendered as a cycle in the order published here. The musical language remains within an extended tonality, but admits some modal elements and contains a few unexpected harmonic shifts. Competent singers will cope easily with this challenge, and bring out accordingly the slight acerbity or sweetness of the harmonies whilst remaining attentive to the overall level of dissonance. Dynamics should be subtly gradated and tempi encouraged that flow but are never hurried.

 The first pair, ‘Jesu Sweete, Sonne Dear’ and ‘At the Manger: Mary Sings’, contrasts an anonymous early fifteenth century text with a poem written last century, by Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-73). In the second pair, the procedure is reversed: ‘The World’s Desire’ is a setting of a poem by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) and is followed by the anonymous and well-known medieval text
‘I Sing of a Maiden’, which probably dates from the late fifteenth century. A further degree of disparity is provided by the change of emphasis in the poetic voice. In ‘Jesu Sweete, Sonne Dear’, Mary talks directly to the child, recounting her pain. She addresses the Christ-child again in ‘At the Manger: Mary Sings’, although her questions are largely metaphorical. In ‘The World’s Desire’, it is we who observe Mary. Finally, in ‘I Sing of a Maiden’, the anonymous observer gently lauds the Virgin, the deliberately objective tone of a nonetheless delicate pastoral poem again helping reinforce the textual pairing. 

The first complete performance of the Four Lullabies was conducted by the composer and given on 7^th July 1991 by the English ensemble Cantores Illuminati in the Church of St. Hedwig, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany during the annual European Festival of Church Music. The Carl-Orff-Chor Marktoberdorf also included the works in a concert held in the Church of St. Martin in October 1999 under the direction of Andreas Hermann. Earlier that year, the cycle was performed by the Choir of Queens’ College, Cambridge in the Philharmonic Hall in Munich’s Gasteig as part of the 10th International Concert of Choral Music. The Four Lullabies have been recorded for West German Radio (WDR) and Bavarian Radio (BR) by various choirs, as well as for BBC Radio 3 by the chamber choir Polyphony.

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Letztes Update: 03.02.2001