MDA001 — Carl LINGER, O Lord Who Is as Thee: Motet for Choir and Orchestra (Adelaide 1851)

Adelaide, 1851
Edited by Richard Divall
Australian Music Series
ISBN 978-0-9923956-0-5 / ISMN 979-0-9009642-0-5

Carl Linger was born in Berlin in 1810 and died in Adelaide in 1862. After early studies in Berlin, Linger visited Milan and Venice to further his study and later returned to his home city. He had a series of songs published in that city and wrote Sechs Zwischenspiele for Orchestra. In 1849 Carl Linger migrated to the Colony of South Australia and took up farming near Smithfield, a venture that was unsuccessful. Relocating to Adelaide, Linger made a major mark on the music and artistic life of Adelaide and, on his death in 1862, there were many eulogies.

A recent study of Carl Linger’s life, details of his early studies, the events surrounding his death and the contents of his will are exhaustively covered in Graeme Skinner’s thesis “Towards a General History of Australian Musical Composition: First National Music 1788-c.1860” [http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au//bitstream/2123/7264/1/ga-skinner-2011-thesis.pdf], pp. 385-387, expanded and updated on the same author’s website [http://www.graemeskinner.id.au/biographicalregisterK-L.htm].

Many of his compositions are only known by mention, as the scores have vanished. Six sacred works, Vier Motetten, a Vater Unser, and this motet, Oh Lord who is as Thee (Skinner nº 315) were found in the Tanunda Liedertafel Library in 1938, and were subsequently housed in the Lutheran Archives in Adelaide. The originals have now disappeared, but not before photocopies of the manuscripts were organised by the Editor around 1968 for the ABC’s Musica Australis project. These photocopies are now held in the NLA.