Stille der Nacht (1923)

The songs Stille der Nacht and Legende, both of which require a large, Mahler-sized orchestra, are among his earliest surviving works and they reveal Bürger, though still a student at that time, to be already a master of the large-scale orchestral Lied, in the tradition of Mahler, Strauss, Zemlinsky or Joseph Marx.

Stille der Nacht sets a radiant poem by the great Swiss writer Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) — an author beloved of the Romantic composers (indeed, this particular poem, evoking the beauty of the night sky in Keller’s characteristic mixture of nature imagery and philosophical reflection, was also set by Othmar Schoeck and Felix Weingartner). The beautiful introduction, moving from nocturnal solo flute, to woodwind, to meditative brass, prepares the way for the memorable D major melody. There is kaleidoscopic orchestration along the way, involving muted brass, string harmonics, harp, piano, celesta and even an organ, but ever and anon it is the sound of the flute (‘einen Flötenton’) that prompts the soloist to lyric meditation. Multi-divided strings lead the way into an ecstatic chorale and the soloist’s final triumphant proclamation. It is after this that the music expands in a climatic, almost Brucknerian coda, the main theme treated in brass canon — the horns, ‘bells up’, sounding like Shofars — before the music dissolves in rustling strings whose ascent directs our senses upwards to the calm of the night sky.

— Malcolm MacDonald in the booklet of Toccata Classics TOCC 0001
reprinted with permission

About the Exilarte Edition
G. Schirmer/Wise Music’s Exilarte Edition exclusively publishes works by composers who were persecuted, forced into exile, or murdered by the Nazi regime. All original manuscripts of these works are archived in the Exilarte Center at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in Austria.