Prof. Prassl has been asked to organize the four root auditions of the Festival, where every choir is asked to perform a well-defined program. The theme is ”Unam petii a Domino”. (Ps 26.4), “One thing I ask from the Lord” – this is the theme for the listening sessions of the 11^th International Gregorian Chant Festival of 2012 in Watou. These words from the 26^th (27^th) psalm speaks of longing for God, for his nearness, for habitation in his house. In short, this psalm speaks of the longing for a living relationship with God. Many proper chants – above all in the time after Pentecost – express an aspect of life with God and in God. We find joyful praise and thanks here, along with the cry for help in dire need, turning to God in times of danger, the plea for healing and redemption. Certainly, part of the theme of relationship with God is also sin – turning away from God and falling away from the bond with him – and repentance and renewed turning to the very center of one’s life. The Book of Psalms is a panorama of human existence before the face of God. Many texts of Gregorian chants are taken from these psalms, and these are set to music and interpreted with musical means. The listening sessions will take up various aspects of that nearness to God which is sought for, prayed for, and experienced. The variety of proper chants invites us to a musical journey of meditation into the land of the soul seeking God. The propers will be enhanced by selected ordinary chants, which are part of the program for the first time this year. The ordinary chants will be sung together with their tropes, and these expand the breadth of music even further and enrich it with new spiritual aspects. This year, for the first time, the Graduale Novum of 2011 is available for singing the chants. This is a book which, following the call of the Second Vatican Council, offers the melodies for the first time in an “editio magis critica.” It is a critical edition of restituted chants which are all the closer to the beginnings of that repertoire which stands at the origin of European art music and influences it up till today.

 Franz Karl Prassl