MP3 | Our Heart's Joy: Ave Maria

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MP3 SINGLE TRACK | Our Heart's Joy: Ave Maria

German composer and arranger Granz Biebl studied music at the Humanistic Gymnasium in Amberg, and received Master of Music degrees in composition and choral conducting at the State Music Academy in Munich. Biebl worked as the choral-music consultant to the Bavarian State radio station, where he worked relentlessly to fill the station's archives with popular choral music, listening to and encouraging small choral groups all over Germany. As a composer, Biebl strove to expand the German folk-song repertoire, composing hundreds of arrangements for all types of choral ensembles.

Biebl's setting of the Marian antiphon Ave Maria exploits the richly sonorous possibilities of double-chorus writing for men's voices. The familiar Ave Maria text is sung by a four-voice choir answered by a three-voice group of soloists. This forms a refrain separating the three chanted versicles of the Angelus, a devotional text commemorating the Incarnation, which results in a satisfying blend of medieval melodic sound and warm, multi-voiced choral harmonies.