Wind Band ...

"A sacral music" - a sacred music. But sacred music, isn't that usually vocal music? And sacred music for wind orchestra, isn't that also a contradiction in terms? Aren't the many flashing gold and silver instruments the epitome of worldly glory and worldly pleasure? Not necessarily, as Hubert Hoche shows us with a differentiated look at music history in his composition Sacral music.

Clearly, in the church the primacy of the vocal, the sacred song. But there has always been splendid instrumental music that served to represent the power and glory of the church, which in this was very close to secular rule. And of course there are those genres of instrumental music that relate to ecclesiastical vocal music: sometimes serving for ecclesiastical use on feast days and holidays, sometimes emancipating themselves for performance in the concert hall.

Hubert Hoche's work A sacral music must also be seen in this historical and genre-specific context. It refers to the oldest surviving form of church music in our Christian culture, Gregorian chant. Named after Pope Gregory the Great, who collected the melodies of the Roman liturgy in the late 6th century and reformed mass chant, the tradition of Gregorian chant extends over one and a half millennia to the monasteries of our present day, where Hubert Hoche became acquainted with it (as a boarding school student in Münsterschwarzach). 

In terms of melody, many Gregorian pieces are limited to the range of a hexachord. Other melodies go beyond these limits, enter further ranges of the church tone and occasionally change it. For our ears today, the limitation of the musical material is in any case characteristic: to unanimity, in the range, in the dynamics and rhythm. This has a calming and meditative effect on us, but also a bit "strict".

It is precisely this limitation of means that Hubert Hoche adopts in A sacral music. The first four bars, crescendoing from piano to fortissimo, expose the tonal space in which the whole piece will move: g - b - a - f. That is all, not even a hexachord, but only four notes of a fourth. That is all, not even a hexachord, but merely four tones in the range of a fourth. From the fifth bar onwards, beginning pianissimo and only audible after a few more bars, the "monk's chant" rises in alto saxophone, trombone and euphonium. Slowly circling in on itself, the music advances: like the procession of three groups of monks approaching each other from a great distance. As if guided by a ghostly hand, they sing together (over the quiet pulse of the regular quarter beats in the timpani), yet each separately and independently. The instruments play seemingly endless textless melismas, always circling the four notes in crotchets, half notes, dotted notes, triplets and occasional semiquaver embellishments. Some voices unite rhythmically and form a kind of harmonic movement (e.g. horns and saxophones from bar 30, at the same time new melodic entry in the sordid trumpet and flute). 

Hubert Hoche arranges the whole piece, which is about six minutes long, as a large, fully composed orchestral crescendo. The same material is played around in ever new combinations of timbre - in this way the composition is comparable to Ravel's "Bolero". Thus the independently conducted individual voices, which condense into a sound surface, culminate in a unison of the whole orchestra (m. 76ff.), crescendoing to fff. To drive the tension to extremes, there is a change of tonal space shortly before this dynamic climax (m. 82ff.) (from g, a, b, f to as, des, ges, b), before a surprising F major chord remains from bar 85, which fades ethereally in the flute and clarinets. And the tubular bells intonate an interval at the end that had not been heard in the whole piece before: the falling fifth c - f.

Each sings for himself, and yet they all sing together. This gives a great communal power. It is fascinating to see how Hubert Hoche, in A sacral music, has created a multifaceted piece from a strict limitation of compositional means, which is carried by a great arc of tension. It is recommended to all artistically ambitious orchestras from the intermediate level upwards.

Gregor Schmitz-Stevens

Gregor Schmitz-Stevens, born 1970 in Bergisch Gladbach. Composition lessons with Georg Kröll. Studied musicology (with Prof. Dr. Helga de la Motte-Haber), German studies and philosophy at the Technical University of Berlin. Worked as a music critic ("Der Tagesspiegel", "Berliner Morgenpost", "Märkische Oderzeitung") and freelance writer. Has worked for GEMA since 2001. Lives with his wife and four children in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

"The idea, behind that work, was born after a hard working day I zapped through tv-programs. There were only discussionprograms in which the vain participants produced by themselves, they don’t hear what the other says and so they don’t know what the other means. It was terrible! Different ways II pillory that kind of development. 

So you can hear free movements and strong movements. The movements are repeated in a kindly way, what means that you hear the same sounds in different ways. Free movements are without a common beat. For the strong movement I chose a strong musical form – fuge. Now it is not a fuge it is a kind of fuge. In that part the woodwinds „fight“ against the brass. An argument against another.

 Important is the seatplan for the concert band too. The brassmusicians sit around the woodwinds and the sound is wandering from the middle to the side and crcled round the woodwinds. Now the sound is wandering inside the woodwinds from the side to the middle. That princip of wandering is a part of that work.

The harmonic is a own creation from me and the basics of thinking grounded at the renaissance - a time of linear thinking in music."

On Hubert Hoche's "Nebelbilder/Fog Pictures" by Gregor Schmitz-Stevens (clarino 09/2006)

Tonal colours and surfaces in the service of a pictorial vision

"'Nebelbilder' was inspired by the beautiful view from my atelier. A view that stretches almost 20 kilometres through a valley. In about 2 kilometres distance the neighbouring village. On the right, along the ridge, the motorway, hidden behind trees and bushes. It was a beautiful late summer morning after an overnight thunderstorm, down below, along the valley, thick clouds of fog, from which cars appeared and disappeared, while the queue of cars on the motorway crept audibly along. The westerly wind carried the ringing of the bells of the neighbouring village very quietly up to me. Enjoying this sight, the door was suddenly pulled open, my son came in and brought me back to reality. This 'game' repeated itself a few times, so that I could no longer retrieve that first moment. It was similar, but just not reproducible anymore. - Carpe diem." 

So much for Hubert Hoche himself about the starting point and inspiration for his composition "Nebelbilder". Images have often been the basis for programme music, just think of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" or Rachmaninov's "Isle of the Dead", also impressions of nature such as in Debussy's "La Mer" or Beethoven's "Pastorale". Here, as there, it is primarily not a matter of doubling the visual or the externally experienced with the means of musical art, not of picturesque music, but of the visions and emotions of the viewer, the inner experience. Hubert Hoche's "Nebelbilder" stand precisely in this great tradition. His music is impressionistic in the best sense of the word, since it is based on real impressions, impressions when looking out of the window. The focus, however, is on feeling. "More expression of feeling than painting" - Beethoven's words on his "Pastorale" also apply here.

The beginning, however, is marked by a very tone-painting, even onomatopoeic element. Out of nowhere, the sound noises of the brass and the rhythmic key noises of the woodwinds rise up with speech sounds. The playing technique of the beginning signals: we are listening to a modern work, and yet a tonal centre rises above the rising carpet of mist with the falling fifth b-flat in the tubular bells, an ancient, almost archaic image: "The west wind carried the ringing of the bells of the neighbouring village very quietly up to me." One is immediately drawn into the maelstrom of this tonal composition. Introduced by the hoquetus of the flutes (m. 35ff.), a pentatonic centre (d-e-g-a-h) forms - in contrast to the beginning - as the starting point for a cleverly composed crescendo and accelerando. Gradually, more and more instruments join in with increasingly agitated rhythms. From m. 69, a magnificent melody in piccolo and high clarinets rises above the colourfully woven tapestry of sound - a masterpiece of compositional technique. After a great increase, there is an interruption (m. 130). The note b, alien to the harmony, is flung out by the whole orchestra fff and remains hanging over very softly, dreamlike, as if from a distance: the high flute and oboe notes sound here like rapturous string harmonics. This is the key passage of the work, an interruption, the disruption of an image, and yet at the same time the return to the image of the beginning with its "natural fifth" b-flat. And so the "reprise", beginning with the return of the melody in the solo of the English horn (m. 223), is also a transformation, a reminder of an original image: "It was similar, but just no longer reproducible."

Building up and breaking off, phase changes: this pattern determines the composition. Hubert Hoche pulls out all the stops of modernism: sections in aleatoric counterpoint, in which each musician plays for himself and at his own tempo, alternate with tonal melodies à la Schönberg; the rhythmic patterns of "minimal music" also play a role in the background. And yet one always has the impression that the music is completely in tune with itself, is genuinely Hoche: these stylistic devices are never mere ends in themselves, but always serve the higher unity and idea of the work. And another important point: all this can be done well in practice; despite all artistic ambition, it is music that can be played well, and one notices the composer's experience in dealing with the wind orchestra in every bar. Certainly, the conductor needs a clear dynamic gradation, a constant differentiation between foreground and background and also a great rhythmic security. Provided this is the case, Hoche's "Nebelbilder" will enrapture any dedicated wind orchestra and make it a favourite piece of the more advanced repertoire.

Gregor Schmitz-Stevens

Gregor Schmitz-Stevens, born 1970 in Bergisch Gladbach. Composition lessons with Georg Kröll. Studied musicology (with Prof. Dr. Helga de la Motte-Haber), German studies and philosophy at the Technical University of Berlin. Worked as a music critic ("Der Tagesspiegel", "Berliner Morgenpost", "Märkische Oderzeitung") and freelance writer. Has worked for GEMA since 2001. Lives with his wife and four children in Berlin-Charlottenburg.