The third Requiem of the spring was a premiere performance of a work by Richard Gabe, a member of the choir at church and connected by marriage to a late friend of mine. Like the Rutter it mixed some words from the Requiem Mass with other liturgical and biblical texts; each movement was written in memory of a friend or family member of the composer. The choir was assembled for the occasion on the day (with prior rehearsal and music circulated beforehand), but quickly gelled into a unified sound, and we had a large audience to perform to for the mid-afternoon concert.
It was a busy weekend for me as there were two Palm Sunday services at Bath Abbey. Highlights included movements from Palestrina’s Missa Aeterna Christi Munera, which I don’t think I’ve sung since I was a student, two settings of Christus factus est (Bruckner and the less familiar Anerio) and Daniel Purcell’s canticles in E minor, as sung by me in Portsmouth Cathedral last year. I’m told there’s been a live donkey at the Palm Sunday Eucharist there in past years, but we didn’t have one this time.