Superverso Per Organo

Ernst Helmuth Flammer is one of the leading organ composers of our time. The connection between Flammer's superverso, performed here by Christoph Maria Moosmann, and Olivier Messiaen's great organ cycles is unmistakable, though the superverso is far more advanced in it's musical design and language than Messiaen's work, only because it was composed considerably later. The superverso per organo, unlike Messiaen's great organ cycle Livre du Saint Sacrement, dispenses with specifically theological titles for it's individual pieces in favor of musical and technical titles. But both share the grand design of the overall program. Trinitas on the one hand, and Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) on the other, as non-mythological, rational, natural, philosophical approaches that correlate faith, in the Cartesian sense, out of a superior creative authority that orders our world. Flammer was born in Heilbronn, Germany, in 1949. He studied mathematics and physics from 1969 until 1972; there followed studies in music theory with Peter Fortig from 1973 until 1979; and then musicology, art history, and philosophy with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht in Freiburg from 1972 until 1980. He wrote his dissertation on Luigi Nono and Hans Werner Henze. He studied composition with Klaus Huber, Brian Ferneyhough, and Paul-Heinz Dittrich from 1976 onward.