Home | Musical CV | Musical Education | Organ | Scholarly Work | Composition | List of Works | Work in the Fields of Church Music and Liturgy | Early Music Days Vienna
Hermann Platzer, the founder and artistic leader of the group until June 2002, and Monika Fahrnberger, being responsible for the organization and planning matters of the ensemble as well as for the voice education of its single members and the group as a whole, have been working together for almost 25 years now in various groups and various fields of music.
That included our cooperation in the choir of the Catholic Students' Community Vienna as a beginning (a large choir with approx. 50 members at times), switched to the Chamber Choir of the namely community after some time and ended up in the founding of a soloist ensemble with 14 members in the 90ies. The mentioned choirs have always performed all kind of music from the Renaissance period to contemporary music, mainly for concert purpose. Whoever of the members was also interested in the religious life of the Catholic Students' Community Vienna was heartily invited to take part in the musical duties of the services, yet, a such cooperation never was forced or even compulsory. Being a member in the concert choir was one thing, participation in the liturgy ensemble another.
Getting acquainted with other musicians has always been an important thing in the philosophy of our choir groups, as we see music as a kind of 'more universal language'. Thus we tried to contribute 'our share' towards that idea and in the year 1991 founded a series 'Acquaintances in Vienna'. In the course of that programme we invited three choirs of former Eastern Bloque Countries to Vienna to be there on a holiday as well as for performance, too. The chosen choirs came from the (former) German Democratic Republic (chamber choir of the pedagogic faculty Erfurt), Lithuania (Chamber Choir 'Jauna Muzika', Vilnius) and the Czecho-Slovakia (Choir 'Technik' from the Technical University Bratislava).
The experiences were intense and interesting, but we wanted to go one step further. As a result we founded the "Multinational Chamber Choir in Austria" which from 1992 to 2001 was held annually during a period of the main summer holidays and in which talented participants from (in principle all over the world but actually) mainly the Eastern European countries with either a good knowledge of German or English are invited to take part in a Chamber Choir camp and the final recordings and concert programmes in Austria. The multinational chamber choir is currently "on hold", since the center group decided to solely focus on the offspring project Early Music days instead for some while. Nevertheless, there may be another follow-up session planned in the future should enough interest be generated in the international choral community. So, if you would like to be selected a member for an upcoming possible session of the project, by all means, go ahead and do let me know!
The 'roots' of the current group 'Mosaik' are to be found in the '2nd Multinational Chamber Choir' of 1993: We had very intense people from Slovakia then and realized that we actually lived very closely together (geographically! It is only 65 kilometres between Bratislava and Vienna, with the Schengen-border in between, though.).
So we decided that from January 1993 on we wanted to try to work as a steady cultural bi-national cooperation consisting of members from Bratislava as well as from Vienna. The dream came true and the result is the full formation of Mosaik nowadays. It consists of two Slovaque singers, and seven to nine Austrians (the ratio keeps changing from time to time according to the demand of the group as well as the availability of interested singers). The system of our ensemble, however, works 'on demand': We perform in all kind of setups, from two people serving in the chanting of the psalms in liturgy through frequent quartet and quintet singing to the 'large' group of ten people.
Currently the group is composed of:
In several formations we travelled to the former German Democratic Republic, the Czech Republic, the Republic of South Africa, the Republic of Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A. as well as to various places of our home country Austria, among others, to St. Lambrecht and Thomatal, to name but two.
The end of the season of 2001/02 also brought about a change in artistic leadership / musical direction of the group: Long-time Mosaik-singer and studied organist and church musician Manfred Novak agreed to take over musical responsibility and leadership of the ensemble after Hermann Platzer's resignment to the position. New things have been happening ever since!
Our upcoming concert with the current team members will be a "Summer Surprise Singing" program which we will perform Friday, June 27, 2008. We will inform about place and glimpses on the program in due course of time.
If you're interested in what's new with us - watch out for our information on ChoralNet or click here for informations on our upcoming performances!
Currently we are rehearsing for the above-mentioned June 2008-performance; apart from that we are already involved again in preparatory work for the next two upcoming meetings with 'Early Music Days Vienna' which is another multinational musical cooperation under Manfred Novak's musical leadership.
If you want to send a message, are interested in getting into contact or
would like to send comments or suggestions, drop me a note!
© Monika
Fahrnberger, 2007
If you want to send a message, are interested in getting into contact or
would like to send comments or suggestions, drop me a note!
© Monika
Fahrnberger, 2007
