{"id":2460,"date":"2014-07-03T23:21:10","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T23:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/?p=2460"},"modified":"2014-09-30T22:06:05","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T22:06:05","slug":"my-top-10-moments-in-the-grande-messe-des-morts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/2014\/07\/03\/my-top-10-moments-in-the-grande-messe-des-morts\/","title":{"rendered":"my top 10 moments in the <i>Grande Messe des Morts<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>@gloschor<\/p>\n<p>I spent last Saturday rehearsing Berlioz&#8217; <i>Grande Messe des Morts<\/i> in preparation for performances in the autumn.  I&#8217;m still smitten by this piece and present my short list of favourite moments.  N.B. I don&#8217;t want to imply that the rest of the Mass is no good, or that these are necessarily musically the best bits!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bar 55 of the <i>Kyrie<\/i>. The first real climax of the work, and where you begin to get some idea of what you might be in for.<\/li>\n<li>Bar 141 of the <i>Dies Irae<\/i>.  The big guns finally arrive.<\/li>\n<li>Bar 240 &#8216;Judicanti responsura&#8217;.  After another huge climax, one of a number of quiet, simple closing passages in this work, with the trademark flattened seventh in the bass.<\/li>\n<li>The second subject of the <i>Lacrymosa<\/i>. Berlioz got quite a bit of stick for this beautiful melody on the grounds of inappropriateness. But this is where you can pretend you&#8217;re singing <i>Le Spectre de la Rose<\/i>, until&#8230;.<\/li>\n<li>THAT chord at bar 179.  Some years ago, a black hole way out in space was found to be playing a very, very low B flat. And here&#8217;s the greatest chord of B flat ever composed.  This chord is, quite literally, cosmic.<\/li>\n<li>Around bar 67 of the <i>Offertory<\/i>.  Could this have inspired Wagner&#8217;s motif of Br&uuml;nnhilde&#8217;s Pleading?<\/li>\n<li>The key change on the tenor soloist&#8217;s first &#8216;Sabaoth&#8217;.  Only a French composer could have written this.<\/li>\n<li>Bar 70 of the <i>Agnus Dei<\/i>.  This haunting passage for low voices takes a different turn from its previous occurrences.<\/li>\n<li>The closing Amens.  Berlioz finished the Mass in a hurry and put together the final movement largely out of music from the earlier ones, with this little coda.  (In fact he needn&#8217;t actually have bothered setting &#8216;Amen&#8217; at all as it doesn&#8217;t occur in the text of the Requiem Mass at this point.)  But when he revised the work he didn&#8217;t recompose this bit, so he must have been satisfied with it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve been counting, you&#8217;ll realise that my list has only nine items. There are a number of possibilities for the tenth one &#8211; I&#8217;ll wait until I&#8217;ve heard an orchestra playing the music, which may make the choice easier, or indeed suggest alternatives.<br \/>\n[And having performed it, I know what to nominate for no. 10 &#8211; the interrupted cadence at bar 95 of the <i>Rex tremendae<\/i>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>@gloschor I spent last Saturday rehearsing Berlioz&#8217; Grande Messe des Morts in preparation for performances in the autumn. I&#8217;m still smitten by this piece and present my short list of favourite moments. N.B. I don&#8217;t want to imply that the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/2014\/07\/03\/my-top-10-moments-in-the-grande-messe-des-morts\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2892,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions\/2892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}