Music for Orchestra

Program Note

In its original form, Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria (1967) is written for expanded male chorus, beginning with an antiphon sung by a four-part choir, answered by a smaller three-part choir. The source of the Latin text is the Angelus liturgy, which is recited three times a day (6am, noon, and 6pm) in the Catholic Church. It is cued by a bell (sometimes referred to as the “Peace Bell”), and consists of three versicles based on the Gospel, followed each time by a Hail Mary (“Ave Maria”). 

Biebl’s Ave Maria was popularized in the United States in large part because of the magnificent recording by the famed male chorus, Chanticleer (“Our Heart’s Joy”).

Franz Biebl was born in Pursruck, Germany in 1906. When he was 20 years old, he enrolled at the Musikhochschule (State Music College) in Munich, where he studied composition under Joseph Haas, and took masterclasses in conducting. Drafted into the German Army during World War II, he was captured by American soldiers in Italy in 1944, serving time as a Prisoner of War at Fort Custer, near Battle Creek, Michigan. 

After the war he returned to Europe, and in 1959 he became the founding director of the Department of Choral Music at the Bavarian State Radio Broadcasting Company. On 2 October 2001, Biebl died at the age of 95 following a brief illness.