Traces of the White Rose

Traces of the White Rose

Find out more about our multi-dimensional project exploring the lives and stories of the members of the White Rose resistance through a new podcast series and live performances.

The White Rose was an anti-Nazi movement run by a core group of five students and a professor in the southern German city of Munich in the early 1940s after the outbreak of the Second World War…

The White Rose resistance stretched far beyond Munich, but at its heart there were six individuals: students Hans Scholl (1918–1943) and his sister Sophie Scholl (1921–1943), Christoph Probst (1919–1943), Alexander Schmorell (1917–1943), Willi Graf (1918–1943), and Professor Kurt Huber (1893–1943).

Between 1942 and 1943 the group wrote and distributed six pamphlets calling on their fellow Germans to mount passive resistance against the Nazi regime. They used a second-hand duplicating machine, and even obtained paper, envelopes, and stamps despite wartime shortages. 

They distributed the pamphlets at great personal risk. On 18 February 1943 Hans and Sophie Scholl took copies of the sixth pamphlet to the University of Munich and deposited them around the atrium at the entrance of the main university building. They were spotted by a university caretaker, and were immediately detained by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo.

Following their subsequent arrests, on 22 February Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst were sentenced to death and executed by guillotine just hours after the conclusion of their trial. Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber, and Willi Graf were subsequently arrested, tried, and sentenced to death on 19 April. Schmorell and Huber were executed three months later, on 13 July, and Graf was executed on 12 October 1943.

The texts that remain are the traces of people who lived and risked their lives for freedom – resistors who stood up to Nazism, and paid with their lives.

“Wherever you may be, mount passive resistance – RESISTANCE …Remember that every people deserves the government it is prepared to tolerate.”

— From the 1st pamphlet of the White Rose

Our partners

We have been working on a multi-faceted recording and cultural exchange project in collaboration with the University of Oxford’s White Rose Project, led by Dr Alexandra Lloyd, a lecturer in German Studies and author of Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets.

Through the White Rose Project, current Oxford University students have provided us with vivid new English translations of the group’s letters, diaries and resistance pamphlets. Alongside their powerful political writings, hearing their private words reveals the human reality behind the groups’ political activism. 

“There are times when I dread the war and I’m on the brink of losing all hope. I don’t like to think about it, but soon there won’t be anything but politics, and as long as politics is this confused and evil, turning away from it would be cowardly.”

— Sophie Scholl, 1940

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The Podcast

This collaboration has encouraged us to think beyond traditional formats for choral music and we are delighted to announce that Traces of the White Rose will be released by Oxford University Podcasts on 12 October 2023, the 80th anniversary of the final White Rose executions. 

We’ll be sharing the story of the White Rose in the resistors’ own words, alongside choral music from our latest album Traces.

We know that the members of the White Rose were all highly creative and musical people - they sang in choirs, played instruments and went to concerts together. Professor Kurt Huber was also a musicologist and folk song collector. One of Dr Alex Lloyd’s theories is that their engagement in music, art, and culture might have helped them to imagine a world beyond the Third Reich, which in turn led them to take political action. 

“Music softens the heart; it orders its confusion, relaxes its tension, and creates the conditions for the work of the spirit in the soul which had previously knocked in vain at its tightly sealed doors. Yes, quietly and peacefully music opens the doors of the soul…”

— Sophie Scholl, 1942

As Sophie Scholl writes, music creates the conditions for the work of the spirit. The music in the podcast represents their cultural imagination and embodies their connections to each other - multiple voices working together to express their profound sense of responsibility to speak up and be heard. 

Traces of the White Rose  Podcast was made with support from the Genesis Foundation Kickstart Fund, the University of Oxford’s Public Engagement with Research Seed Fund, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, and the Higher Education and Innovation Fund.

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Live performances

Alongside the launch of the podcast we will be presenting two live performances of Traces of the White Rose in the coming months, combining the translations from the White Rose Project with music from our most recent album Traces.

Friday 6 October

St Martin-in-the-Fields, London

Saturday 11 November

Wiltshire Music Centre

Byrd400: Windows of men's souls

Windows of men’s souls

Tenor Jonathan Hanley explores the context of William Byrd’s life and music ahead of our anniversary concerts.

William Byrd is probably the most famous of all of the wonderful English composers of the sixteenth-century, and for good reason - his music is full of character, imagination, and pathos, and a watershed in compositional style for vocal music in England.

Etching by Gerard Vandergucht (British Library), Public Domain

The 400th anniversary of Byrd’s death in 2023 has seen a fantastic celebration of his work across the world. The thrilling tale of pieces written for secret services in great houses with priest holes and the ever-present threat of persecution is a fascinating accompaniment to his magnificent music. That the work of a man who gave voice to those in his community who were unable to speak continues to resonate with musicians and audiences alike 400 years later, is an even more compelling reason to celebrate Byrd.

“Byrd was risking not only treason but also heresy if he put a foot wrong. ”

His experience was a unique one. Whilst he enjoyed the patronage and protection of a Catholic aristocratic house in his later years, he spent the heyday of his career in London, not only working for the protestant Elizabeth I, but enjoying her benefaction and favour while writing works that were clearly evoking and sympathising with the plight of Catholics persecuted for their faith. Publishing three settings of the Latin mass in the 1590s under his own name was not only brave and bold, but a defiant act. Unlike Shakespeare, who also got away with a certain amount of artistic license, Byrd was risking not only treason but also heresy if he put a foot wrong. 

The opening of the Cantus part from Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices (IMSLP)

Edmund Campion by J.M. Lerch; Antwerp (British Library)

Elizabeth had famously said on her accession that she didn’t desire to ‘make windows of men’s souls’, a sixteenth-century version of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ After two reformations and a reversion to Catholicism in less than 20 years, Elizabeth saw that there was clearly a need for compromise, as long as nobody made a scene. The threat of persecution from a Queen whose religion and politics were so intertwined and changeable can never have been far away though. There are famous examples of those Elizabeth martyred for their faith – Byrd’s friend Edmund Campion for one – though, by and large Elizabeth was much more tolerant than her sister, Bloody Mary. 

This tolerance seems to have been based on pragmatism and an ability to adapt and play the game. The first archbishop of her new Anglican church was Matthew Parker, a Protestant who had played a convincing enough part to survive the purges of England under Mary, Elizabeth’s sister. Byrd, whilst a Catholic, knew how to keep his head down in Elizabeth’s protestant England, and therefore enjoyed her support. He worked as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, and he and his friend and teacher Thomas Tallis were given a monopoly on printing music in England. He was clearly a man, like Tallis, who understood how faith, politics and loyalty intersected. 

“There is much that is unspoken in Byrd’s work”

Clearly the great contradiction in Elizabeth’s policy was that through her patronage, she allowed Byrd to open a window into his own soul through his incredible music, giving voice to so many who were in his position. There is much that is unspoken in Byrd’s work in the texts he chose to set, the importance of his rhetoric and the way he highlights the most significant passages. Many of the texts make reference to contemporary Jesuit works, which means that many of these pieces, when heard or performed by Catholic households in domestic settings, would have taken on additional meanings. It’s clear that Byrd is at his best in large-scale, plangeant and nostalgic outpourings like Infelix ego or Ne irascaris, and he manages to give voice to both a personal and communal grief in his style.  

In 2022, SANSARA commissioned a piece of music written by Ukrainian composer Natalia Tsupryk. A Quiet Night - Tyhoyi Nochi sets text by renowned Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan and quotations from one of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s many powerful speeches. Like the music of Byrd, Natalia’s piece is a musical expression of solidarity, a vehicle for compassion and reflection and a catalyst for connection. We’ve been overwhelmed and uplifted by the response to Natalia’s beautiful music, and the many communities around the world that have performed the piece and shared their experiences with us.

“after darkness I hope again for light”

The final section of Libera me Domine, et pone me juxta te, one of the pieces we’ll be performing in our upcoming concerts, sets the text ‘after darkness I hope again for light’. This universal and human prayer is at the heart of much of Byrd’s work and still resonates four centuries after his death, giving voice to those who need hope for a new dawn.

- Jonathan Hanley

We’ll be performing our anniversary programme Before the Dawn in the first week of July - find out where and book tickets via the link below:

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We’ve put together a Spotify playlist for our programme which you can listen to below:

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Matthew Johnson Photography

Jonathan Hanley is a regular tenor with SANSARA and worked closely with Artistic Director Tom Herring to devise our Byrd anniversary programme Before the Dawn. Find out more about Jonathan and his work via his website.

Palestrina meets Harvey

palestrina meets harvey

On Friday 31 March, we return to London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields to present our choral-electronic programme and the London premiere of Jonathan Harvey’s mesmerising arrangement of Palestrina’s Stabat Mater for choir and surround sound electronics.

This blog post takes you through the programme which features music by Josquin des Prez, Rhiannon Randle, our collaborator for this project Joe Bates, and of course Palestrina and Harvey.

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Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) is a seminal work of electronic music, composed by Harvey in his first year at IRCAM, the flagship French electronic music studio. The work displays Harvey’s curious mix of influences: the rigour and strangeness of French serialism, the sonorities of the English cathedral tradition and his idiosyncratic spiritualism.

The piece takes two samples: the great tenor bell of Winchester Cathedral, and the voice of Harvey’s son, Dominic, who was a chorister at Winchester at the time. The bells give the piece its name: inscribed on them is the text ‘Horas avolantes numero, mortuous plango, vivos ad preces voco.’ (I count the fleeing hours, I lament the dead, I call the living to prayer.)

As listeners, the multi-channel speaker system places us inside the bell. The piece transforms its complex tones, modulating in gliding swoops between its layered pitches. Harvey describes himself turning the bell ‘inside out’, making its low notes decay quickly and its high notes linger on. Dominic’s singing is warped too, its consonants and vowels split and manipulated. These effects were at the cutting edge of computer music: a persistent feature of Harvey’s work is the combination of new technology with ancient sources.

This is followed by Josquin des Prez’s stunning motet Inviolata, integra, et casta es Maria à5, introducing the Marian theme that runs through the rest of the programme. The chant melody is presented in canon between the tenor and alto parts with the other voices surrounding these lines in imitative free polyphony. The music ebbs and flows, moving seamlessly between passages of lilting motion and moments of pure stasis such as the tricolon ‘O benigna! O Regina! O Maria!’. 

Written for the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge in 2011, The Annunciation is one of Harvey’s last works. Most notable in the context of this programme is the opening phrase of the piece which directly quotes Palestrina’s Stabat Mater. This, along with Harvey’s own arrangement of the Palestrina, show how important this 16th century masterpiece was to him, not only when transposing it into new worlds via electronics, but also in an a cappella setting. The reference to the Stabat Mater is particularly striking given the context in Edwin Muir’s annunciation scene: the innocence of ‘the girl’ is shrouded by Harvey’s musical allusion to Mary’s grief following the crucifixion. 

As with The Annunciation, Palestrina’s Stabat Mater was written towards the end of his life around 1589/90. Continuing the syllabic style established in the Missa Papae Marcelli, the antiphonal writing for the two choirs points to Venice and shows Palestrina’s awareness of the fashionable polychoral writing of the time. It is easy to see why Harvey was so moved by this piece, with its impassioned setting of one of the most human of sacred texts. 

Joe Bates’ Ceasing was commissioned by SANSARA for the 2019 Sound Unbound festival presented by the Barbican and first performed at St Bartholomew the Great in May 2019. Ceasing considers how we deal with death. It was inspired, in part, by the text of the Stabat Mater and by the writing of Derek Parfit. Parfit emphasises how death is more continuous with life than we may imagine, considering how our memory lives on in the minds of others. 

Joe describes his process further:

“To write this piece, I interviewed the singers of SANSARA about their experiences of death. This was a strange and moving process; I’m immensely grateful to the singers for their openness. Their stories have been integrated into the text of the piece, which I have written myself.

The piece starts with specificities of my grandmother's death: I rushed to reach the hospital in a taxi but arrived moments after she died. I consider what I missed: how do lives typically end? The piece then opens out further, integrating the individual stories of the singers, first in a huge texture, then as recorded telephone calls, filtered through electronic static. The electronics blur and magnify the choir, suggesting the mass of similar stories behind them, while the structure of the piece – from coherent counterpoint to blurred fade out – evokes a fading consciousness.”

Punctuating the two large scale choral-electronic pieces in the programme is a contemporary setting of O nata lux by Rhiannon Randle who employs dissonance in striking ways throughout the piece, echoing the false relations in Thomas Tallis’ well-known setting of the same text.  

Written some two decades after Mortuos, Harvey’s arrangement of Palestrina’s Stabat Mater (2004), in collaboration with the programmer and composer Gilbert Nuono, explores similar piece to the earlier electronic work. The arrangement combines three versions of the Stabat Mater: one sung live by the choir, one processed live from the microphones, and one pre-recorded by another choir and transposed.

These layers create a kaleidoscopic re-working of Palestrina’s work, as the transposed pre-recordings push the tonality into strange new areas. Yet these new key centres always carefully relate to the original, resulting in surprisingly smooth modulations. The live processing of the vocals varies from atmospheric to apocalyptic, recalling at moments an over-saturated echo and at others a whirling cacophony.

For many years, this piece was not able to be performed due to the obsolescence of its digital components: it was composed using Apple’s PowerPC architecture, which has not been supported since 2011. Nuono painstakingly restored the programme in 2022, with the support of Lammermuir Festival and Faber Music, to whom we are hugely grateful. In September 2022, we gave the piece’s UK premiere at the Lammermuir Festival and we’re thrilled to be giving the London premiere at St Martin’s on Friday 31 March.

- Tom Herring & Joe Bates