MDA001 — Carl LINGER, O Lord Who Is as Thee: Motet for Choir and Orchestra (Adelaide 1851)

Adelaide, 1851Edited by Richard DivallAustralian Music SeriesISBN 978-0-9923956-0-5 / ISMN 979-0-9009642-0-5Carl Linger was
born in Berlin in 1810 and died in Adelaide in 1862. After early studies in
Berlin, Linger visited Milan and Venice to further his study and later returned
to his home city. He had a series of songs published in that city and
wrote Sechs Zwischenspiele for Orchestra. In 1849
Carl Linger migrated to the Colony of South Australia and took up farming near
Smithfield, a venture that was unsuccessful. Relocating to Adelaide, Linger
made a major mark on the music and artistic life of Adelaide and, on his death
in 1862, there were many eulogies.A recent study of
Carl Linger’s life, details of his early studies, the events surrounding his
death and the contents of his will are exhaustively covered in Graeme Skinner’s
thesis “Towards a General History of Australian Musical Composition: First
National Music 1788-c.1860” [http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au//bitstream/2123/7264/1/ga-skinner-2011-thesis.pdf],
pp. 385-387, expanded and updated on the same author’s website [http://www.graemeskinner.id.au/biographicalregisterK-L.htm].

Many of his
compositions are only known by mention, as the scores have vanished. Six sacred
works, Vier Motetten, a Vater Unser, and this
motet, Oh Lord who is as Thee (Skinner nº 315) were found in
the Tanunda Liedertafel Library in 1938, and were subsequently housed in the
Lutheran Archives in Adelaide. The originals have now disappeared, but not
before photocopies of the manuscripts were organised by the Editor around 1968
for the ABC’s Musica Australis project. These photocopies are now
held in the NLA.