On April 22nd, 2023, a new work for choir & organ by the Flemish composer Bart Michiels will be premiered by the Dutch chamber choir Capella Brabant at the Big Church in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, under the direction of artistic director and conductor Marc Versteeg.
The work will be programmed alongside Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Mass in G minor as well as a new work by Kris Oelbrandt. The musical works are featured in a concert series called ‘Kroonpen’ where Capella Brabant goes in search of composers with a spiritual nature. Indeed, in the past, many composers have drawn inspiration from religion and spirituality for their musical works, particularly in choral music.
In ‘De Profundis’, Michiels attempts to provide a contemporary take on the role of religion and spirituality in today’s largely atheistic Western World. By juxtaposing text fragments of Psalm 130 from the Holy Bible as well as excerpts from Oscar Wilde’s famous letter ‘De profundis’, he explores various religious themes from a present-day point of view. The choir musically reinforces these themes by balancing between various musical characters throughout the piece: sometimes, dark and atmospheric, other times transparent and lively, the choir shapeshifts colorfully along with the reading of the texts.
“Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord”
In Psalm 130, known as one of the seven penitential Psalms, the Psalmist calls out to God from the depths of human suffering, hoping for, expecting, and insisting on God’s hearing. The Psalmist has every confidence that God will hear and respond to his cry of pain because giving mercy is central to who God is. The lamentation put forth in Psalm 130 is unfortunately central to our everyday individual and communal lives, taking many different shapes such as grief, depression, illness, poverty, abuse and many more.
For Oscar Wilde, the Irish poet and playwright, Psalm 130 was the central inspiration for a long letter to his friend and lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde wrote this letter, titled ‘De Profundis’ while being imprisoned in Reading after his conviction for ‘gross indecency’ – i.e., entertaining sexual relations with other men. In the first half of the letter, Wilde recounts his previous relationships and extravagant lifestyle which eventually led to his conviction and imprisonment. In the second half, Wilde describes his spiritual development during his imprisonment as well as his identification with Jesus Christ. Furthermore, Wilde writes about feelings of redemption and fulfilment in his ordeal, realizing that his hardship had ‘filled the soul with the fruit of experience’.
Psalm 130 is not about asserting the power of God’s judgment or even the extent of human sin. Instead the Psalm tells us that God is not the kind of God under whose judgment the sinner withers. Rather, ‘there is forgiveness with God’. Forgiveness, in other words, is who God is. As such, the Psalm is about the very character of God, which remains steadfast even in the abyss. God’s unchanging love is the essence of who God is, and God’s power is precisely the power to redeem.
Capella Brabant seeks to connect with the experience of today’s music lover and reassesses and revalues the canon of choral literature. Traditional choral music is moved to the ‘here and now’.
The choir, led by artistic director and conductor Marc Versteeg, is based in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and consists out of 32 experienced singers who continually invest in their artistic qualities through individual voice coaching and choir formation. In periodic master classes, the choir, led by renowned singing teachers, works on choral sound, purity, timing and transparency.
Capella Brabant also aims to connect music with theatre and other art forms as well as various social themes. For examplein 2016, the choir collaborated with Panama Pictures, a professional company on the cutting edge of dance and circus as well as with live electronic composers Strijbos & van Rijswijk in the production Last Days of the Summer.
In the autumn of 2017, Capella Brabant was guest choir at the CD presentation concert of Missa Unitatis in collaboration with the Dutch chamber choire and the early music specialists of Capella Pratensis.
In 2018, the ensemble, together with the visual artists of STOK, presented the program Lost – Reborn. A cathartic path of life, criss-cross through the Kruithuis. While walking, the audience was taken on a journey past current works of art and a spectacular performance of Brahms’ masterpiece Ein Deutches Requiem in an arrangement for soloists, choir and two accordions.
Theater concert ‘Sweelinck’, in January 2019 in the Witte Raadhuis in Vught, was about the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621), with a libretto by Manon Uphoff, offering a fictional look at the life of one of the greatest Dutch composers.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention