8 questions answered by Wolfram Buchenberg
The composer Wolfram Buchenberg answered 8 questions about his work:
Your most impressive concert experience?
was in actual fact a rehearsal experience which set the course for my entire future. At the age of 11, I happened to discover a rehearsal of Bach’s motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (Sing now to god) for double chorus taking place in the Marktoberdorf high school, which fired my imagination. Two month later, I was allowed to join the choir myself and have been an enthusiast of choral music ever since.
What was your very first composition?
It is stored away at the back of a drawer awaiting the Day of Judgement.
Which other composers have provided you with inspiration?
Perotin, Bruckner, Ravel, Debussy and Messiaen.
Which text authors prompt you to hear music in your mind?
No, that’s not the way I work …
Where is your favorite location for composing?
At the North Pole. Unfortunately, I have never been there.
When you are not composing… … I am allowed to be a human being.
If traveling through time were possible, you would …
… like to milk a female Tyrannosaurus Rex with her (apparently!) 7 teats. That was always my childhood dream as a son of a farmer.
Do you play an instrument or do you sing?
Not either/or: I do both!! Both are integral parts of the practical school piano lessons I teach.
Wolfram Buchenberg
Dum medium silentium
Choral works
Cantabile Regensburg; Matthias Beckert
Carus 83.504
O Freude über Freude
Text compilation: Lux fulgebit (Jes 9,2; Introitus of the 2. mass to christmas); O Freude über Freude (Schlesien, around 1840); Es sungen drei Engel; Freu dich, Erd und Sternenzelt; Gloria in excelsis Deo
Als vil in gote, als vil in vride
for Coro SSAATTBB
Gulla, mille gullala bena
This composition commissioned by the German Music Council consists of four parts that can be performed as one piece or inserted separately as connecting pieces between other compositions in the concert program, so that the concert is designed as a single large arc by means of improvised transitions.
Missa ad maiorem Dei gloriam
An absolutely thrilling setting of the mass, influenced by Latin jazz, for large chorus, big band, and baritone. The composer takes as his theme people’s deep-seated fear and its overcoming through faith. Suitable for concert or equally for liturgical performance.
The Emigrant
Joseph Campbell’s poem The Emigrant presents us with the inside view of an emigrant who is going to leave his native land in a few hours and before this, has a farewell party with relatives and neighbors. The alternating feelings and suppressed sadness are reflected in Buchenberg’s composition which skilfully oscillates between over-exaggerated boisterousness and despair.
Splendor paterne glorie
In Splendor paterne glorie Wolfram Buchenberg works with dissolving chords and washes of sound. A special factor in this fluid game of colors is the solo violin, which always adds to the choral sound, and is never its concertante counterpart.
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