Structured Time [Christoph Metzger]: Music structures time. It forms and resounds in spaces, permits events to come to the fore, creates gestalts and gives direction to time's passing. The music "in the Spirit of the Word" uses the sound of the human voice as the most original instrument. Its pitch, cultural attributes and individuality are resounding in 53 compositions during the ecclesiastical year. The largest interval of time we regularly experience, the year, shapes the work. In this period, 53 phases with four layers of sound develop and play continuously in the St. Marien Church. Listeners make their way through the nave and experience the work in changing ways while standing and walking. For the compositions, the voices of the congregation's two priests read biblical texts specially chosen for each of the 53 weeks of the ecclesiastical year. Their spoken words first were recorded, then broken down by the composer into their spectral components, and finally assembled into phases. Words spoken, not sung, are brought into musically structured time: music is created. Delicate fibres make up the tonal weave of the individual compositions. These are gathered into a cycle. Compositional and semantic texture blend with one another, reciprocally affect each other. In generally long quiet phases, the voices, hardly recognisable as such, rise and fall: a music of hidden voices?
Listening in Space In the church interior, what one hears is initially related to a structure that derives from the distribution of sound sources. The music sounds softly, at the limits of perception. The composer defines a total of twenty listening-places whose sound sources are inserted into the church floor. Sound zones arise in relation to the listener's location, inviting one to linger. Sounds create an atmosphere that motivates the visitor to turn toward the art treasures around them.
Many visitors may have unexpectedly encountered the work when visiting the church, which resembles a gallery. Their attention becomes absorbed by the circling, concentrated, small or large expanses of sound tapestries in space. Atmospheric suspensions elicit moments of directed attention.
Directed Moments Individually, ideal listening points are found. As in a gallery, the sequences of pictures and bible episodes are arranged in an order, and like the sequence of columns in the church, they structure the space. White light penetrates through large windowpanes and illuminates the interior of the church. It is the connection between images and sounds in the active listener that evidently occasioned Muschner to create the work. Particularly since one component of the composition is the title that directly relates to the Evangelical church, whose name still calls to mind the cult of Mary in the time prior to the Reformation. Directed moments explore the transition from interior space to the outdoors. The changing light of day and the noises of street traffic point to transitions. The church becomes a specific acoustic location [Excerpt from: Christoph Metzger: »Michael Muschner. Der St. Marien Zyklus. 53 Kompositionen aus dem Geist des Wortes«, in: MaerzMusik, Programmbuch 2006]