Church music: New tones for the church

Soh how on this evening one has not yet heard the praise of God. Regensburg Cathedral, mid-November. Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer invited to an event organized by the Catholic aid organization “Aid to the Church in Need”, which campaigns for persecuted Christians all over the world; a priest from Iran who had to flee from the mullahs has also come. A music student sings the first movement of the hymn “Bleib bei uns, Herr” in a newly harmonized version, carried on a Fender Rhodes piano, a Moog synthesizer and a jazz trumpet. The schola of Gregorian chant mixed with jazz singing.

The man behind the new sound is called Gerwin Eisenhauer and is one of the most renowned jazz musicians in the country. After the concert, he later said, an elderly lady came up to him, who was very enthusiastic; the bishop was also impressed. “We’re not trying to scare traditional churchgoers; we want to be an inspiration, to break new ground,” says Eisenhauer about his mission not only in the cathedral: to bring church music into the 21st century, away from the songs that work with three chords, out of tune guitars, transverse flutes and cheesy lyrics and so on Eisenhauer, “near hit kitsch and have nothing to do with the level of Bach”.

14 days after the gig in the cathedral, in the basement of the Catholic University for Church Music in Regensburg, the only one of its kind in Germany. In the percussion room there is every percussion instrument that you can imagine. A conventional acoustic drum set, an e-drum set, various snare drums, large and small drums, orchestra cymbals, xylophones, congas, bongos; down here is Eisenhauer’s kingdom, he is an honorary professor at the HfKM.

The jazz drummer holds two claves in his hands and practices a rhythm pattern with his student Julia Dendl, in her mid-twenties, who is enrolled in the master’s program in “New Spiritual Music”, NGM (and sang “Bleib bei uns, Herr” in the cathedral) . She should determine the rhythm to various melodies. Eisenhauer hums “Fox, you stole the goose”, later he intones Thelonious Monk’s “Well you needn’t”. Eisenhauer, whom everyone just calls “Geff”, asks: “Do you hear the impulse? What time signature is it?”

Church musicians are good at sight reading, but find it difficult to improvise

It’s rhythm work with a master. Eisenhauer studied drums with great artists, he played with Wolfgang Flür from “Kraftwerk”, he became internationally known with the jazz formation “Trio Elf”, with whom he toured America. He is a musical border crosser and that suits his job here. Church musicians are incredibly good musicians who can sight read anything, he says. “But if you take away their literature, if they have to improvise, or if the emphasis isn’t on the one but on the two and the four, as is usual in jazz, then they are often in a fix.” For what Eisenhauer teaches, needs he no sheet music.

The NGM master’s course is a unique musical experiment in Germany, which, not entirely by chance, takes place in Regensburg, “the world capital of church music”, as Franz Liszt once said. Together with his lecturer colleagues Dieter Falk – who acted as a producer for the group “Pur” and many others and was nominated six times for the music award “Echo” – and Franz Prechtl, an arranger and jazz pianist with great experience, Eisenhauer wants his students “new aesthetics ’ from minimal music, world music or jazz, which Julia Dendl reports has so far given up far too little or not at all in her classical music studies. She has a bachelor’s degree in piano and singing pedagogy, she sees NGM as “a necessary antithesis to classical training”.