Summer has finally returned to Leipzig. Temperatures have soared and the gardens and parks are sweetly perfumed. When it rains we are blessed with storms reminiscent of Beethoven’s sixth symphony. Do you know the movement I mean? For a musician or music lover, when living in this city, many of one’s day-to-day activities automatically receive their stock classical soundtracks. They come suddenly and surprisingly when one turns a corner and is greeted by the Administrative Court building – Wagner’s Tannhäuser; or when one takes a shortcut through a forest – Schumann’s Waldszenen. Sometimes though, fantasy and reality overlap, for example when one strolls past the Thomaskirche – the Church JS Bach worked at for many years – and can overhear an organist practising Bach which seems to literally seep through the stone.
Hannah and I arrived here in August last year, and busied ourselves immediately with trying to forge new lives. One particular goal was to deepen our musical training and sensitivities by studying with the fantastic teachers at the Hochschule here (this is our last time at university, we promise!). Another hope, albeit one less tangible, was to really integrate with a new land, its language, and its way of life. Without pre-existing musical partnerships or opportunities to slot into such as those we left in Australia, such integration is essential for survival! Through our new jobs as English teachers, activity in our new church and among our colleagues at the conservatory, we have made wonderful friendships that we know will last.
The challenge of the new
There are many challenges though, as anyone who has moved to a new country knows. All the administrative humdrum that one is familiar with in one’s homeland is turned on its head and one must learn everything quickly. It’s not just we have the approximate German word power of a gifted six year- old, there are nooks and crannies in German life that simply don’t exist in Australia. Who would have known, for example, that our hard-fought-for health insurance wasn’t quite the correct kind for us as students? Or take that letter that said ‘we’re going to disconnect your gas…’ Really? Even though we signed the agreement so you could take our payments automatically?
Music school in Leipzig
Yes, we’ve made a few costly mistakes. They belong to an imaginary expenses column we call the ‘unforseen mistakes borne of living in a new culture’ expenses’. However they are worth bearing for the experience! Leipzig is simply a great place to study and practise seventeenth and eighteenth century music. The ‘Hochschule für Musik und Theater’ is the oldest conservatory in all of Germany and was founded by Mendelssohn himself. A surprising number of nineteenth and twentieth century music stars have studied or taught there, including Robert and Clara Schumann, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Edvard Grieg, Leoš Janáček and Max Reger. However, the Hochschule today is just as alive, sporting a highly revered theatre department, jazz, and dramaturgy department. The Alte Musik (old music) department at the Hochschule is made up of a progressive and eclectic group of practitioners whose ideas we have already found to be challenging and convincing in their fresh approaches to the old flogged horses of early music issues. One of my lecturers is Nicholas Parle, a very fine, long time expat Australian harpsichordist that many people may remember. Guest specialists have spoken on such subjects as Ganassi’s diminutions, and on basso continuo as used in the nineteenth century. In source reading classes we plough through Johann Adam Hiller’s and Johann Adolph Scheibe’s flowery treatises in old German, searching for hints for how to perform recitatives from their time. We re-string and re-voice whole harpsichords – for no credit points. On Wednesdays, we dance galliards. (No, I will not provide photos of me “galliarding”!)
Of concerts, instruments and venues
Beyond the walls of the Hochschule there are some great places to see good early music concerts. Apart from the almost daily Bach at the Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche, there are numerous Manor houses with their ubiquitous drawing rooms, always perfect for a viola da gamba player or a lutenist. One particularly special building is the Bosehaus, headquarters of the Bach-Archiv and Neue Bachgesellschaft. Beyond the baroque courtyard and up the winding stairs, one finds what is close to the perfect chamber music venue – oh and did I mention it is home to one of the loveliest harpsichords I’ve ever performed on, a chamber organ, and no modern piano? This is a venue definitely worth a test drive.
Another favourite place of ours is the Grassimuseum, which boasts a world renowned instrument collection. Especially wonderful about this place is that the enthusiastic experts there are happy to have people play their original instruments. Only a few pieces are in perfect working order, but they’re there to be found, tucked away in the Zimeliensaal – a name which translates as ‘hall of treasures’. As exciting as it is to work with original instruments, there are also unfortunate realities to be dealt with: such as when one plays a concert with an original hand-pumped Silbermann organ in which the majority of the pipework is original, and at the original pitch is… very high. This doesn’t only mean intonation problems for everyone, it means violinists break their strings almost hourly.
Looking back, looking forward
In all it has been fourteen months since we arrived in Europe. We still feel unsure whether our toehold on the continent is firm enough to allow us to relax, and so we view our impending visit to Australia with curiosity. Will visiting Sydney trigger an inundation of homesickness for Australia that we’ve been otherwise too busy to feel? Will it feel normal to speak to strangers in English, or have we already developed new foreign instincts in this relatively short time? Even more interestingly, how will we feel about returning to Germany? I’m hoping that that as long as we keep paying the gas bill, things will be ok.
Chris Berensen
July 2011 Concerts in Australia
Hannah and Chris Berensen www.berensens.com return from Leipzig, Germany in July to present a baroque song recital, Hark the Echoing Air. The program includes masterpieces of English middle class music featuring Blow, Purcell, Baumgarten, Handel, Haydn, Morley, anonymous street songs, and a new baroque work by Chris Berensen.
- Sat July 9 – 7.30pm – The Old Darlington School, University of Sydney, Maze Cr. Darlington
- Sat July 17 – 2.30pm – Robertson Christian Education Centre, St. John’s Anglican Church 62 Meryla Street, Robertson (Southern Highlands) N.S.W.
- Sat July 24 – 2.30pm – Wesley Music Centre, 20 National Circuit, Forrest A.C.T.
Chris Berensen received a University Postgraduate Award scholarship while completing a Masters degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under the supervision of Dr. Alan Maddox and Philip Swanton and Dr. Neal Peres da Costa. Notable Australian ensembles he has performed with include the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Salut! Baroque, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, and the Marais Project. Chris was also a long term member of the Musica Viva in Schools ensemble “Sounds Baroque” and appeared on The Marais Project CD, “Love Reconciled”.