Angels – intermediaries between the visible and the invisible world – aren’t always easily heard and seen. But when musical settings of texts give them expression and sound, they are there: in history and in the present, in war and in peace. Making this heard requires a high level of artistic skill, a solid sense of style, fine distinction and shaping of sound, as well as a sincere intensity in singing.

Florian Lohmann’s and the Collegium Vocale Hannover’s decision to omit any kind of instrumental accompaniment to these ten musical gems from five centuries, leaves room for the spiritual experience of an uncertain reality, even for the religiously unmusical. The speechless mourning over cities destroyed during war can be heard as well as the worship of an enchanted world – even without a cognitive understanding of the texts and musical details.

The expressiveness, the motion of the melodies, the timbre, the diverging and reuniting of the voices and choirs, the alternation of calmness and excitement or of sadness and joy – all of these things allow music to touch and to move us.