An Evening Prayer

The composition 'An Evening Prayer' for four-part mixed a-cappella choir (SATB) by Magdalena Zimmermann is based on a sacred poem by the English Baroque poet and philosopher Thomas Browne. To set these highly expressive verses to music, the composer born in Hanover in 1985 uses several changes of key and time as well as meticulous dynamic and expression markings. Thus, Zimmermann succeeds in setting the central statement 'Sleep is a death, o make make me try, by sleeping, what it is to die' in a sphere of dream and night by using means inherent in the music. The chosen form of prayer eventually reveals, according to the composer herself, the hope 'that the death-like sleep is just the gateway to another higher life'.