Helmut Duffe and Emanuel Vogt:| Windsbach Psalms II

Where can one find finer words from friends than those of the Psalms of Praise or of Thanksgiving? … Then again, where can you find more profound, more miserable, pitiable words of sorrow than in the Psalms of Lamentation?’, Martin Luther asks in his preface to the Psalms, noting the richness of this biblical compilation. Since Luther’s days, polyphonic psalm settings have had a secure place in the history of German church music. This demonstrates that the oldest, tried and tested songs of Christianity have lost none of their relevance even today. The Windsbacher Psalms, too, can be understood through this tradition. ‘There is, indeed, hardly anything more beautiful than the sound of a young men’s choir’, Karl-Friedrich Beringer claims. Consequently, the Windsbacher Psalms are a welcome opportunity for him to present the special sound qualities of the men’s voices from the Windsbacher Knabenchor (Windsbach Boys Choir) – without the boys’ voices. Helmut Duffe had set the first psalms in 1977 during his time as cantor the Studienheim, the choir’s boarding school. They were intended for the daily celebration of Matins, the boarders’ morning service. Emanuel Vogt, on the other hand, initially composed his psalm settings for a choir in the Central Franconian city of Neuendettelsau, which provided the music for services and other spiritual celebrations. Karl-Friedrich Beringer sees the psalm settings of both composers as part of the Windsbacher Knabenchor’s core repertoire, and performed them regularly: thus Beringer made the Windsbach Psalms a fixed liturgical component of the ‘Lorenz Motet Services’, which are held in Nuremberg regularly.