Seelentrost. Soul Comfort. The Sound of Inner Life.

Music history is full of “goosebump moments” – those instances when sounds get up right close to us, penetrating our most secret enclaves and striking a chord with something inside. Sometimes it’s a big, opulent orchestral sound or the energy of a pop concert with thousands of people. But most often, it’s actually the moments of extreme reduction, almost to an essence of the sound, that touch body and soul in such a way that leaves us still thinking about them weeks or months later. When musicians go into this sort of reduction, making themselves vulnerable in the most extreme concentration of artistic resources, the aura of the extraordinary shines through. One such moment, for example, comes in Bach’s famous St. Matthew Passion, shortly before Jesus cries out with the last of his strength: “My God, why have you forsaken me?!” And then an alto voice rises, “Ach, Golgatha”, revealing something like the core message of this Bach work and the theme: “this reaches my soul!”

This scene in Bach is a late example from an epoch of musical exploration of the soul. Just in passing, we could mention that in Grimm’s Dictionary, the largest German compendium of knowledge and language in the early modern period, there are over 2,000 words that can be formed around the term for soul (Seele): Seelendiät (sustenance for the soul), Seelenfieber (soul fever), Seelenherzchen (a term of endearment, like sweetheart), Seelengewitter (an emotional outburst), Seelenmelodie (melody of the soul), Seelenmut (soul courage), or Seelenwürze (soul spice, which referred to the ability to spice up life with imagination) – and of course Seelentrost, soul comfort. In her debut CD, Isabel Schicketanz takes us by the hands and leads us into this musical exploration of the soul. She brings us to the sources of a very particular sound, where we find songs united by a common concern: comforting the soul. Dr. Oliver Geisler