Concert for Remembrance Day

Concert for Remembrance Day

• Conductor – Matt Beckingham
• Olivia Rose Tringham (soprano), John Dunford (bass), Angelina Egerton (harp),
• Rachel Fright (piano), Alan Horsey (organ)
• Goodall: Eternal Light
• Love Divine
• Gorecki: Totus Tuus

Howard Goodall’s Eternal Life: A Requiem was commissioned in 2008, the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One, possibly the last such commemoration with any surviving combatants, and though it was not deliberately conceived thus, it is powerfully appropriate that the central Dies Irae movement takes as its vision of hell the horror of armed conflict. Alongside the Latin text phrases Goodall has juxtaposed John McCrae’s haunting war poem In Flanders fields. McCrae, a Canadian military doctor of great distinction, died on the Western Front in January 1918. This unorthodox and unusual interpretation of the Requiem, traditionally a prayer for the salvation of the departed soul, centres on those who are left behind to grieve. His intention is to seek out the healing power of music, to create a sense of solace whilst acknowledging the unbearable loss and emptiness which comes with the death of someone close, in the hope that musical expression can provide space for reflection and maybe even some comfort. Howard describes Eternal Light as a Requiem for the living, using poetry readings and hymns alongside the more familiar text of the mass, to focus on interrupted lives. Uniquely in contemporary classical music, Goodall is able to compose music which is both original and accessible, and with Eternal Light, he has achieved a work with a powerful personal connection which has ensured its continued potency and popularity.

Love Divine was first performed at the Sheldonian Theatre by the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, Directed by Stephen Darlington, commissioned by the Choir Schools’ Association celebrating the year 2000. The work is a setting of words by Charles Wesley. Goodall has always had an interest and admiration of the Wesley family; from the great hymn writer, Charles Wesley, to the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, and importantly for Goodall, the great church composer Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

Son of amateur musicians but discouraged from developing his musical gifts, composer Henryk Mikolaj Górecki persevered and became a leading figure of avant-garde music in post-Stalin Poland. Serialism and its resulting dissonance characterized his early music, but he turned to a more romantic sacred minimalism in the mid-1970s. Górecki composed Totus Tuus, Op. 60 in 1987 for the third visit of Pope John Paul II to his homeland. The text begins with a phrase the Pope himself coined after surviving an assassination attempt, believing that Mary herself had delivered him: Totus tuus sum, Maria (I am completely yours, Mary). The remainder is from a poem by Maria Boguslawska. The music with its exquisite harmonies is based on chants of the Polish Catholic Church and reflects Górecki’s deep love of his country and its musical traditions.

Górecki on music:

I think that music is one of the domains that people really need, and its importance only depends on whether one knows how to receive it. Every person needs to be prepared to know how to “use” music. Not only music—also literature, painting, sculpture, and film. . . Tarkowski said that art is prayer. It is something that I also emphasize. But it is difficult to understand: one has to mature to this thought. It seems to many people that prayer means to “recite the Hail Mary”—but someone may recite Hail Mary as many times as one wants and it may not be prayer.

• Saturday 11 November, 7.30pm
• St. Jude’s Church, Hexthorpe, DN4 0BT
• Entry £14 paid in advance, £16 on the door
• Students £5, school pupils FREE
• Please contact: Marion Emmerson 01302 360129
• All enquiries email: doncasterchoral@gmail.com