Tyrolean Christmas Concert

Karl Pembaur: Christmas Mass, op. 18 (1915) & Christmas pieces of the early 20th century from Tyrolean tradition.

Karl Pembaur’s father Josef was music director in Innsbruck and shaped the city’s musical life for decades. Karl was born in 1876 and, like his older brother Josef Jr, embarked on a career as a musician. He studied at the Royal Music School in Munich. After completing his education, he worked in Dresden as choral director and répétiteur at the Court Opera and as organist at the Catholic Court Church. In 1908 he was appointed music director and from 1913 he led the Dresden Hofkirchenmusik. Pembaur created mainly church music works that were widely disseminated, but also songs and marches. His beautiful-sounding Christmas Mass of 1915, which is as functional as it is original, is a so-called Plenary Mass – that is, he not only set the parts of the Ordinary to music, but also the propers of the “Missa in die” (Mass in the Day), the third Mass for Christmas: The Introit “Puer natus est”, the Gradual “Viderunt omnes fines terrae”, the Offertory “Tui sunt coeli” and the Communion, again with the text “Viderunt omnes fines terrae”. Pembaur’s mass combines the tradition of church music with a late Romantic tonal language typical of the time; the influence of his father’s masses is just as noticeable as an orientation towards the model of the Munich grand master of musica sacra, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger. The mass is complemented by Christmas pieces of the early 20th century from Tyrolean tradition.