Somehow I found myself singing three concerts with a Requiem in, within four weeks. The first was the return of CanZona (I sang in their last concert in December 2019) to perform Stainer’s Crucifixion and Rutter’s Requiem.
I sang the Crucifixion as a student and don’t think I’ve performed the whole piece since then! Not that I have a particular aversion to it, but I haven’t taken advantage of chances to do it and it had faded from the memory a bit. It used to be sung every year on Good Friday at another church in Bath, but that tradition appears to have died out. Of course it never goes away entirely, thanks to God so loved the world and a couple of hymn tunes (about which I hope to write more in another post).
I was assumed to know John Rutter’s Requiem, but in fact I’m unfamiliar with his larger works for choir and orchestra. It includes other biblical and liturgical texts, and draws on a mix of styles, including the French Requiem tradition and spirituals. The setting of Psalm 23 was composed some years earlier, and I’d already encountered it as he recycled it for Psalmfest too. We had lost a couple of altos to Covid, so I filled in alto leads as and when I could.
Our concert made headlines in the Bath Chronicle for non-musical reasons which I won’t go into here.