In Flanders' Fields vol.59 - Piet Swerts - Heilige Seelenlust

The oratorio Heilige Seelenlust is the interplay of the Biblical Song of Songs and Angelus Silesius’s poetry. This oratorio announces a new stylistic period in the composer’s oeuvre. The composition is based on modality and polyphonic writing styles, but these have been translated into contemporary musical language. Its musical layers are much more complex, and the canonical procedures used are a spin-off of the compositional techniques of the Renaissance. The work taken as a whole carries a clearly positive message, thanks to the meaning of the text and its translation into sound. It is not a dramatically laden work, but rather a festive one, highly colorful, with abundant melismas, a sensuous aural experience that the public will find most accessible