(SW 1076)
House inscriptions – 6 aphorisms based on old house inscriptions for mixed choir a cappella, duration approximately 14 minutes.
When walking attentively through historic old towns, one occasionally encounters various inscriptions, for example, placed on doorframes or the walls of old half-timbered houses. They are usually in rhyme, but almost always aphoristically concise. They often refer to the happiness and well-being of the house and its inhabitants, while others remind both visitors and passers-by of their own fate. Six such inscriptions from different regions of the German-speaking world served as textual sources for Christian Ridil’s choral cycle presented here.
As usual, the texts are explored very carefully for their meaning; at the same time, the mood and atmosphere conveyed by the inscriptions are also sensitively captured.
Musically, the six pieces of the cycle contrast with one another in their compositional design. The spectrum ranges from homophonically constructed strophic songs to more complex polyphonic structures such as canons or fugues. For example, the hastily fleeing “Geh g’schwind vorbei …” (“Go on quickly, pass by ...”) of the fifth piece is transformed into an almost breathlessly tight canon at the fifth, which vividly underscores the shadowy fleetingness of the text.
In this work, too, Christian Ridil demonstrates how appealing it can be to combine traditional and modern elements and shape them into a new form.
Martin Schmeck
Note: The sound files are intended for experienced musicians and orchestra leaders to get a first impression of the style of a composition. Synthetic sound generators, which do not aim to satisfy audiophile demands of a music consumer, were used as a basis.
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