Christian Giersch Shares His Path to the Lyre

My Path to the Lyre 

Christian Giersch playing the bass lyre at Schloss Seehaus in 2021

As I grew up in a Lutheran parsonage, singing and playing the piano and organ were the most important musical experiences of my childhood. Starting around the age of 14, I regularly accompanied my father on his walks to the village churches in the area to play the organ for church services. This happened under the conditions of the atheistic regime of the German Democratic Republic. The churches were poor, the organs old and out of tune, the congregations small. What inspired me back then was the music of J.S. Bach and free improvisation – both of which I still love to this day.

At the age of 21, after an unsuccessful attempt to escape from communist East Germany I was imprisoned for 11 months. During this time, in a completely unmusical environment, I had my first intense experiences of pure inner listening to music. However, I had not learned to write down these musical experiences.

After I came to the freedom of West Germany with the help of the West German state, I was finally able to study church music. The organ was my main subject, but I was lucky enough to meet a spiritual teacher in piano who worked with me on the essentials of sound. From this teacher, Dora Metzger, I learned to understand and work on the connection between breath and movement with inner and outer sound. I was also able to talk with her about my experiences of inner listening.

I have to say that I learned the essentials of playing the lyre on the piano back then, when I didn’t even know the lyre yet!

During this time of my studies, I also came into contact with anthroposophy. Through Rudolf Steiner, I found the gateway to a truly great understanding of what music is. Without him, I might not have remained a musician. 

The first time I heard lyre music was at a Christian Community service at Christmas time in 1977. I had the feeling that this sound expressed the supernatural truth of tones, and immediately the impulse was there: I want to learn this!  It was not easy to find teachers, but I was subsequently able to build on everything I had learned through the medium of the piano from Dora Metzger.

Since that time,  I have been a constant student of the lyre. This instrument is always about making the acoustic sound transparent for the movement of the supersensible or “etheric” sound. 

This is a new musical quality that we must gradually develop in our time in order to avoid becoming more and more spiritually, mentally, and physiologically numb, which is the direction we are being subtly pushed in our modern materialistic world.