Heavenly voices

Authors: Matti Bauer. Culture - BR / arte - 2008 - 90 / 52 min

Shining eyes, rosy lips forming an "O", and a tiny bead of sweat on his nose. Peter is one of 60 boys performing, full of concentration, the "Ave Maria". The boy´s choir Regensburger Domspatzen however, is not only known to connois¬seurs of clerical music. For more than a thousand years, their singing has touched and moved people around the globe. It´s a very special thing to be a "singing sparrow" - to be torn between a normal boyhood and a life which takes the Domspatz to places all around the world. After all, not many children get the chance to visit the Pope`s summer residence as singing ambassadors of a small Bavarian town called Regensburg.

In Heavenly Voices, Director Matti Bauer spends time with the Domspatzen to discover their absolute love for singing, the fascination of the perfect sound and its spiritual dimension. The film observes those who are aspiring to this perfection with great dedication and strong discipline: the young boys and their teachers. It is a film about a tradition, which over a course of centuries has created its own rules and still kept up with time. This is a unique success-story, which for the Domspatzen has opened the doors to the most famous concert halls on Earth.