Dresden amen

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The Dresden amen (Dresdner Amen) is a sequence of seven notes sung by choirs during church services in the German state of Saxony since the beginning of the 19th century. The motif was first used in, and is particularly associated with, the city of Dresden.

The sequence has been used in various forms by composers since the 19th century.

Composition

The Dresden amen was composed by

, in Saxony. The "Dresden amen" is actually the second and third parts of a threefold amen.

Use in classical music

Felix Mendelssohn used the Dresden amen in his fifth symphony, the "Reformation". In the first movement, the theme appears in the strings:

The theme was also used by Richard Wagner, most notably in his last opera, Parsifal. Wagner was a Kapellmeister in Dresden from 1842 to 1849, but he would probably have learnt the motif as a boy attending church in Dresden. It was incorporated into one of his earliest operas, Das Liebesverbot, and also appears in the third act of Tannhäuser.

's El gran teatro del mundo.

Charles Villiers Stanford used a slightly expanded Dresden Amen at the end of his Nunc Dimittis in B-flat, op. 10 (1879).^[2]

Alexander Scriabin inserted a theme reminiscent of the Dresden amen in the first movement (Luttes ["Struggles"]) of his Symphony no. 3.

, uses the Dresden amen prior to the presentation of the hymn Helmsley with its associated words "Lo, He comes with clouds descending".

, particularly in scenes featuring the life of Christ.

John Sanders based his Responses for Evensong on the Dresden Amen. Igor Stravinsky starts the 3rd movement of the Symphony of Psalms with a shortened version of the Dresden Amen, finishing with a dominant chord on tonic pedal note.

References