Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)
Motets
Martin Haselböck (b. 1954)
Organ improvisations
Martin Haselböck (organ)
Chorus sine nomine/Johannes Hiemetsberger
rec. 2024, St Ursula, Vienna, Austria
No texts or translations
Gramola 99335 [48]
Bruckner’s shorter choral works are of exquisite beauty and appeal to those who are daunted by his symphonies. Although they are usually known as motets, he called them choruses, and they were written for specific moments in the church liturgy, Bruckner being a devout Roman Catholic. However, nowadays they are usually performed as anthems at any convenient point in a service when they are not given as concert works. Bruckner wrote around forty of them; around ten of them are well-known and popular, and here we have six, interspersed with organ improvisations by Martin Haselböck.
Bruckner set the Ave Maria three times. This is the version for seven-part choir. It begins with the upper voices only. The lower voices then take over before the two sides unite to exclaim ‘Jesus!’. The later part of the work uses some bold and characteristic harmonies.
Virga Jesse, to words based on Isaiah 11, was written as a gradual, that is, to be performed between the epistle and the gospel at mass. This is one of several works here to use the Dresden Amen, a chant composed by Johann Gottlieb Naumann in the eighteenth century and taken up by several later composers, including Mendelssohn in his Fifth Symphony and Wagner in Parsifal.
Os justi is also a gradual, to words from the psalms, and is written in the Lydian mode, which corresponds to the white notes on the piano, with no chromatic alterations. This was in honour of the dedicatee, the choirmaster Ignaz Traumhiler, who was a strong supporter of the Caecilian movement which advocated reform of the church’s chant.
Vexilla regis is the great hymn by the sixth-century poet Venantius Fortunatus and is used liturgically at Vespers in Passiontide and in the liturgy on Good Friday. Bruckner set all seven verses of the hymn in its liturgical form; usually, only three verses are sung, but here we have the whole set, making this much the longest work in this recital.
Christus factus est is the gradual for Maundy Thursday and this is Bruckner’s third setting of this text. This is a very chromatic work, with some of Bruckner’s characteristic harmonic progressions. Again we have the Dresden Amen. There are also quotations from Bruckner’s E minor mass.
The text of Locus iste is the gradual of the mass for the feast of dedication of a church and is based on a passage in the book of Genesis. It was written for the inauguration of a chapel in the cathedral at Linz but appears not to have been performed on that occasion. There are some very bold harmonies in this work.
Between the motets, we have organ improvisations by Martin Haselböck. I must admit to a dilemma about these. Churchgoers are used to organists filling in blank spaces in the liturgy with a kind of glorified doodling, which can be quite pleasant but is not offered as serious composition. Organists know that these performances are ephemeral. It is noteworthy that Bruckner, though apparently a great improviser, did not publish any of his efforts of this kind. I am not sure of the value of preserving what are essentially occasional performances. Nor do I see any aesthetic value in spontaneity as such, though the appearance of spontaneity can be a legitimate aesthetic effect, as in the introductions of the last movements of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata and his ninth symphony. So I found these organ improvisations quite pleasant, but not the sort of thing I would necessarily want to hear more than once.
The performances of the motets are another matter. These are beautifully done, with exact intonation, expressive singing and a real feeling for the words. However, I have to point out that you only get six motets on this disc, while others, such as those by Sigvards Klava with the Latvian Radio Choir on Ondine, or Andrew Lucas with the St Albans Cathedral Choir on First Hand, each has over a dozen. I should add that the recording is excellent, and the notes, on which I have drawn, are good. However, there are no texts or translations included.
Stephen Barber
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Bruckner Motets contents:
Ave Maria WAB6 (1861)
Virga Jesse WAB52 (1885)
Os justi WAB30 (1879)
Vexilla regis WAB51 (1892)
Christus factus est WAB11 (1884)
Locus iste WAB23 (1869)
