Ebarme dich

Putting together this issue of On Site, on sound, has really made me listen to things.  And because music is the soundtrack, more so than traffic, or radio discussions, or mechanical systems, I find I'm listening to recordings and tracks with a different set of filters.

Several contributors to issue 28: sound talked about the purposeful manipulation of reverb time in churches and cathedrals.  This video of Michael Chance, with the Brandenburg Consort, singing 'Erbarme dich, mein Gott', from Bach's Matthäus Passion, Parte second:39, is clearly in a church – well, we can see that, but it is also in the sound of his voice, which is almost otherworldly.

When I looked about for other recordings of this same conveniently short and lovely piece, I came across Delphine Galou with Les Siècles, clearly not in a church.  More glamorous recording, a totally different but oddly more conventional sound, and it isn't just the difference between a counter tenor and a contralto, rather it is in that other active member of the ensemble, the space.