New Sacred Song

My more intense occupation with New Sacred Song originates from my participation in the course on New Sacred Song at the Diocesan Conservatory for Church Music of the Archdiocese of Vienna, which I ended successfully in 1995. The main subjects scheduled for this course are the following:

guitar
ensemble singing
ensemble direction
arrangement

All these are being taught by Mag. Hermann Platzer. And whereas my success in playing the guitar remained somewhat moderate, I profited a lot from the lessons in arrangement and ensemble singing. In the latter subject it was mainly the very intense occupation with the texts of songs - their biblical contents and theological essence, liturgical placement and connection to the music - which provided a new insight into liturgical music in its entirety for me. Since my final exam I have remained a part of this course as a voluntary co-teacher and musical help for the subjects of ensemble singing and ensemble direction - in the same way as my classmate and colleague of the year Gerd Henkel (guitar player and musical director of the band A-Live).

From our class originated a team consisting of Hermann and Regina Platzer, Monika Fahrnberger (a voluntary co-teacher of the same course as well), Gerd Henkel and myself, who - from 1994 to 1996 - regularly (about once per month) offered further education to interested participants. During these workshops new sacred songs in connection with a certain topic were being introduced and taught. Since 1996 workshops of a similar kind have no longer been offered on a regular basis but on demand (e. g. of a parish). In case you should be interested in housing a workshop in your premises or for a group of yours, please get connected with Monika Fahrnberger being responsible for the coordination of these activities.

For these events as well as in connection with the course of New Sacred Song I wrote several musical arrangements as well.

Further engagements of the above team were the direction of workshops in the course of continuing education offers at the Bildungshaus St. Bernhard in Wiener Neustadt and recordings for a series on topic of the New Sacred Song that was broadcast on the radio in the Holy Week 2002 by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation.

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