Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi
Erling Wold
About this work:
Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi was commissioned by the Cathedral in St Gallen Switzerland and will be premiered in its entirety in the Fall, but we are here performing a few excerpts. The full piece is a setting of the Ordinary of the Catholic Mass accompanied by two Psalms and a virtuosic organ postlude. The Cathedral is a baroque building built in the mid-eighteenth century on the site of the original and quite famous Abbey of St. Gall, a major center of scholarship and learning in the middle ages in Europe, which is still represented today by an incredibly beautiful library containing one of the most comprehensive collections of early medieval books. The Mass is named for Notker of St. Gall (familiarly known as Notker Balbulus, or Notker the Stammerer; c.840 - c.912), who was one of the first people to identify themselves as a composer in the Western World. His book Liber hymnorum is an early collection of Sequences, which he called "hymns," mnemonic poems for remembering the series of pitches sung during a melisma in plainchant, especially in the Alleluia. In addition, he was a writer, known for a martyrology and a metrical biography of Saint Gall. He was beatified in 1512.
Year composed: 2006
Duration: 00:40:00
Ensemble type: Chorus, with or without Solo Voices:Chorus with Orchestra
Instrumentation: