Night Birds - A story of power, peal, pals and passion Thiemo Kraas

A story of power, peal, pals and passion

Nighttime.
People have always been fascinated and frightened by it at the same time.
On the one hand, it is romanticised and contains promises of freedom and adventure. On the other hand, it is feared and seen as the epitome of danger and disaster. A NIGHT BIRD is not just a bird that hunts at night, but in a figurative sense a nocturnal person: someone who either does their work at night or just a night crawler.
How does a person feel who spends a large part of their life in the dark? This was the question I asked myself when I accepted the commission to write a piece for the 20th anniversary of the music association Glückauf Anthrazit Ibbenbüren. As the former local mine's company orchestra, the musicians wanted a composition that would capture a miner's typical everyday life in music.

1. Night
The composition begins darkly and mysteriously. It comes out of nowhere. Accompanied by a wafting tapestry of sound, we hear the first fragments of a theme that is more closely associated with mining than any other. It is received as the miners' hymn and is also reflected in the name of the commissioning orchestra.

2. Sunrise
The starry sky gives way to the slowly rising sun and provides our protagonist with a little daylight.

3. Green Lung
On a sunny morning like this, the picturesque landscape of the Tecklenburger Land is at its most magnificent.

4. Downwards
After the worker has put on his work gear in the coop, his shift begins. The slinger gives the signal for the start, the lift's protective grid rattles down and the pals race down 1500 metres in the pit cage.

5. Work
The work underground is hard and exhausting. The mine's extreme narrowness is reflected in a nervous, chromatic theme at close quarters. The piece shows its rough, harsh and edgy side.

6. Danger
A majestic miner's song (Der ist der Herr der Erde, wer ihre Tiefen misst, und jeglicher Beschwerde in ihrem Schoß vergisst He is the lord of the earth, who measures its depths, and forgets every complaint in its bosom) is disturbed by a restless, dissonant accompaniment: quite contrary to all the romanticism often associated with the miner's profession, the daily danger for the worker in the tunnel was enormous.

7. Prayer
On the one hand, gratitude for a working day spent in safety is expressed in silent prayer ...

8. Hymn
... on the other hand, in a splendid, collectively sung/played anthem that on the one hand unites the miners and on the other gives the NIGHT BIRDS a musical guiding theme.

For the music association Glückauf Anthrazit Ibbenbüren e. V. and its conductor Julian Teltenkötter on its 20th anniversary (2023).

Münster, in March 2023 - Thiemo Kraas NIGHT BIRDS - musical note:

The beginning of the piece (bars 1 and 2) can either be played by trumpets only, by a keyboard only or by trumpets and keyboard together. It is also possible to omit the first two bars completely.
If a keyboard is used, trumpets 2, 3 and 4 can remain silent from bar 3 to bar 18, but trumpet 1 must play.
For the signal bell that sounds in bars 80 to 82 and in bar 169, it is advisable to use as large an instrument as possible to imitate the sound of a shaft bell.
For the wind machine that comes in in bar 84, we recommend wiping sandpaper over a (rough bass) drum skin to represent the descending pit cage (in addition to a rather rare large wind machine with a rotating drum) or alternatively using a small wind machine to blow in. This instrument (despite its small size) is able to be heard in the orchestra without any problems.