Overtones in Old European Cathedrals: Thoronet captures Michael Vetter singing in the Cistercian abbey of Le Thoronet. The two Gesänge der Nacht (Songs of the Night) are freely improvised liturgies for overtone voice and tambura, with long melodic lines, several overtone passages and the answers of the bats and crickets that live in the building.
Vetter (1943-2013), born in Oberstdorf, was a German musician, painter and writer who first became known in the late 1950s for renewing recorder technique, with multiphonics and microtones, and later, internationally, for overtone singing and vocal improvisation. He began to perform as a vocalist and to experiment with overtones in 1970, during some ninety concerts at Expo '70 in Osaka, mostly of Stockhausen's music. From 1973 to 1983 he lived in Japan largely as a Zen monk, then settled in Freiburg. Karlheinz Stockhausen later wrote a principal role for him in Mittwoch aus Licht. Here he sings and plays the tambura, and he also took the cover photograph and wrote the notes. The recording was made on 12 and 13 September 1987 inside the abbey by the Aurophon mobile multichannel studio, recorded and edited by Harald Hassler.
Le Thoronet was built between about 1176 and 1200 in the Var, one of the three Cistercian abbeys of Provence, with Sénanque and Silvacane, known as the Three Sisters. Its stone walls create a long echo that forced the monks to sing slowly and perfectly together. Schott calls it the dark sister of Sénanque, sought out only by bats and other experts in echoes. The first song lasts nearly 19 minutes, the second almost 23. Over the tambura drone Vetter alternates expressive melodic development with overtone passages, and the night animals of the abbey respond.
The disc was issued under the series title Overtones in Old European Cathedrals, and Vetter's own list of his Wergo records pairs it with Entfaltung, Liebeslied, recorded at Sénanque. The same list includes Tambura-Meditation, Tambura-Preludes and a series of Zen records for bells, gong, koto, piano, tambura and flute, made after his return from Japan. Two years before Thoronet he had recorded Zen, a live solo koto concert, for the same label.
CD, Wergo Spectrum SM 1080-50, released in 1989, with German and English notes.
