Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag

Distler Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag
from Mörike-Chorliederbuch Op.19

- for mixed chorus SATB

The composer Hugo Distler was an important discovery in the early years of Bärenreiter. Karl Vötterle even spoke of a “new beginning” in his company’s work. Bruno Grusnick, director of the Lübeck Sing- und Spielkreis and closely associated with Bärenreiter as a Buxtehude researcher, had sent Distler's recently completed manuscript of the "Jahreskreis" – a “collection of 52 two- and three-part sacred choral pieces” – with a letter of recommendation in autumn 1932.  In the score, Dr Richard Baum who was Karl Vötterle's long-time editor and confidant, recognised the "new music" they were looking for as an "expression of their time", which did not feel like avant-garde modernism, but was related to the music of the “Singbewegung” (singing movement) and was "shaped by the austere spirit of the old masters", but which was written by a young “contemporary man”. 

The 24-year-old composer was immediately invited and appeared in Kassel, “small, blond and petite, spirited and shy at the same time”.  An agreement was quickly reached and on 11 November 1932 Hugo Distler was already able to write in a publisher's questionnaire: “Bärenreiter will shortly be publishing my 5-part Chorale Passion Op.7 and 'Der Jahreskreis' Op.5.”  As Vötterle stressed the importance of "long-term collaboration", all works were published until Distler's early death in 1942 and manuscripts that were rediscovered in the 1990s were also published posthumously.  This was despite the difficult times in which the composer and his work were subjected to hostility and defamation by the National Socialists. 

In his memoirs "Haus unterm Stern", Vötterle confessed that there were only a few cases in which he had “published work after work of a composer with so much enthusiasm, with such firm belief in the validity of what he had created.”  Hugo Distler's entry into the publishing house marked Bärenreiter’s clear turn towards contemporary music.