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New German Wave

The Web 2.0 generation hits the right note. Anyone who makes it into the Audi Youth Choir Academy is given artistic polish. Preconditions are natural talent, a love for classical music and the willingness to work hard.

COPY/JAKOB SCHRENK
PHOTOS/URBAN ZINTEL

There are some things that are even more important than chatting about boys or the best disco in Berlin. Clara Horbach, 19, who studies music and mathematics in Munich, pushes away her half-eaten portion of schnitzel, gets up from the table, says “see you later” to her friends, with whom she has been talking animatedly, and steals out from the dining room as unobtrusively as possible. Outside, Clara crosses the lobby of the Berlin-Wannsee Youth Hostel, opens the heavy wooden door of the rehearsal room, sits down behind a grand piano, takes out her music and starts to play Bach’s “English Suite No. 3 in G minor.” From the start of the opening bars, Clara closes her eyes, lowers her head, and gently bends her back as if she were a diver preparing to jump into a sea of music that accompanies her, into the deep where she can be alone. Just her and the music. Choir director Martin Steidler claps his hands loudly to bring Clara back from the depths of her musical bliss. Gone unnoticed by Clara, he has been standing in the doorway, listening for quite some time. He now forces himself to say in a stern voice, “We told you that you should relax for at least two hours to prepare yourself for the concert tomorrow.” “But I’ve hardly had a chance to play the piano this week,” Clara pleads. “Please. Just another ten minutes.” The corners of Steidler’s mouth twitch as he tries very hard not to smile.

Any choir director who is unable to stop his students from practicing for even two hours can count himself a happy man. “It is incredibly fun working here,” says Steidler. A professor at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Munich, he has been conducting the Audi Youth Choir Academy since its inception in the fall of 2007. Twice a year, gifted students aged 16 to 26 are given the opportunity to rehearse and perform under intensive professional supervision. During the week of rehearsal in Berlin, during which Clara hasn’t been able to forget Johann Sebastian Bach for even a moment during her lunch break, the choir is studying the “Creation” by Joseph Haydn, which will then be performed as part of the Berlin Fairy Tale Days.

Singers for the youth choir audition shortly before the week of rehearsals begin, and are selected by Martin Steidler, Sebastian Wieser (a cultural studies graduate working at Audi) and the pianist Jean-Pierre Faber, who among other things teaches at the Mozarteum university in Salzburg. It is the type of audition known so well from TV casting shows where the members of the jury try to upstage each other in pure rudeness. Steidler, on the other hand, always remains friendly. Even so, it doesn’t make his verdict sting any less. He often likes to interrupt, sometimes singing one of the passages himself. “Now do it again, and make it better this time.” Steidler can be both hard and fair at the same time. That’s because – unlike pop music – classical music has a clear set of criteria, which have nothing to do with such vague terms as “charisma” or “star appeal,” but rather with intonation and musical interpretation. A soprano can either hit a note or not. A bass is able to reach the D below middle C, or only a G. Quirin Würfl can even go down to the second D below middle C. The 19-year-old studies history and Latin in Regensburg. With his brown locks, open smile and strong shoulders, he looks like he has just stepped out of the pages of Heidi. As his deep, mellifluous voice fills the room – “The heavens declare the glory of God” – Steidler leans back in his chair for the first time that day and folds his hands over across his lap. For just one moment, he is no longer a member of the jury, but a fan who does not know what he should admire most: Quirin’s talent or his pure love of music

The Youth Choir Academy has 70 members, including Quirin and Clara. 70 music fanatics. 70 arguments against the conventional wisdom that choral singing and classical music have run their course and that TV casting shows are all the rage with young people. The Youth Choir Academy is the complete antithesis of the pop universe. “I would never do that,” says Quirin. The things that matter in these casting programs are show, appearance, and how crazy a person is. The youth choir, on the other hand, is about “a willingness to work hard,” says Steidler, as well as talent and a deep passion for music. The choir director’s ambition is not to shape soloists. He is looking to take individual voices, as perfect as they may be, and mold them into a larger whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. “Many young people are beginning to take an interest in choral singing again,” he says. “A broad public is beginning to rediscover the value of classical music.” While in Berlin, Clara, Quirin and the other choir members rehearse for up to eight hours a day. Either with the choir as a whole, with their individual sections – soprano, alto, tenor and bass – or on their own in private singing lessons, where Clara is now, balancing on a rubber teeter-board while vocalizing through her scales. Balancing is going well enough. From the way Clara moves, it is clear that she often likes to dance the salsa, sometimes several times in a week. But as for singing, there is still room for improvement. “Clara is like a diamond in the rough. She has a wonderful voice quality, but she needs to hone her technique. That’s where I come in,” says voice teacher Barbara Bübl. Clara has brought along the alto aria “Prepare yourself, Zion” which they are working on together from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Clara is not allowed to sing through the consonants. She is only allowed to vocalize using e-ei-e-i-i-o. “So that you learn how the ‘i’ is formed right at the front of the mouth and nose area in the mask, and how with the ‘o’ the tone should remain the same and only the articulation changes,” explains Bübl. She goes on to say that a singer has to train their vocal chords just like a 100-meter runner has to train their quadriceps. “Learning to sing is like going to the gym.”

During the few breaks, the singers stand together in small groups outside the rehearsal room. Almost all of them have a water bottle in hand, like soccer players after a game or a model between photo shoots. And almost all the choir members are wearing the typical uniform of the Web 2.0 generation: skinny jeans, XXL sneakers and piercings. One boy, in baggy pants, opens up his silver laptop as carefully as if it were a treasure chest, and loads up a couple of pictures from the rehearsals. Clara is also sitting at a computer, updating her profile on a social network. She answers a few friend requests, mostly from other choir members. The singers will keep in contact. They are bound together not just by Web 2.0, but also by the experiences they have had during this long week of rehearsals. And the sense of achievement from the concert. The choir has just finished singing the last note of Haydn’s Creation in the Berlin Cathedral. Their audience is made up of over 1,000 Berlin schoolchildren who are clapping, screaming and stamping their feet. Just like at a pop concert. Clara’s cheeks are flushed with excitement and pride. She took note of the alto’s clear and beautiful resonance, noticed how precise each and every entrance of the bass had been, and was thrilled by the soprano’s shimmering joyfulness, just as they had rehearsed time and time again. Quirin just cannot stop laughing. Like a high-jumper who knows the bar has been set very high and has cleared it anyway. He revels in the magic of the moment.

Jakob Schrenk is working as an editor at Neon while he completes his doctoral thesis in sociology.