Bel Canto Chorus Offers Sad But Beautiful Fare

Provided by Bel Canto Chorus

The upcoming Bel Canto Chorus concert features not one, but two requiems, both pretty unusual. Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem is considered one of the masterpieces of 20th century choral literature, and Herbert Howells‘ Requiem is a kind of rediscovery a half century after it was written that has a special appeal.

The Bel Canto’s artistic director Jonathan Laabs chose the theme Voices United for his first concert earlier this season, selecting music reflecting shared human experiences. Repertoire for Voices of the Soul, the ensemble’s next concert on Sunday, March 16, expresses grief, remembrance, and hope. The concert includes two requiems with settings of text drawn from the Catholic Mass for the Dead and a sacred funeral motet by J.S. Bach (1685-1750). Performing with the chorus are organist Simone Gheller and cellist Daniel Van Gelderen. Two chorus members, soprano Chelsea Betz, and baritone Joel Rathmann, will sing solo passages.

Duruflé’s Requiem was composed both to honor the memory of his father and to earn a commission fee. One of several French composers invited by the Vichy government to write new music, Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) began the work in 1941, but did not complete it until 1947. Duruflé was ultimately paid 30,000 francs for the piece. Its first performance was broadcast over French radio in November 1947 to commemorate All Souls Day.

The work, nine movements for four-part choir, soprano and baritone soloists, and organ, is built on Gregorian chant melodies. Australian choral conductor Aleta King notes that the composition’s “rhythm, meter and bar lines [are] carefully arranged to preserve and enhance the authenticity of the rhythmic freedom inherent in the original chant melodies.”

The Requiem “reflects, in the immutable form of the Christian prayer, the agony of man faced with the mystery of his ultimate end,” Duruflé wrote. “It is often dramatic, or filled with resignation, or hope or terror, just as the words of the scripture themselves that are used in the liturgy. It tends to translate human feelings before they’re terrifying, unexplainable, or consoling destiny.”

The six-movement, unaccompanied Requiem by British composer Herbert Howells (1892-1983) is usually performed as a chamber work with a much smaller group of singers than the 100-voice Bel Canto ensemble. The piece was written in 1932 for the choir of Kings College in Cambridge, England, but was never performed there. Large sections of it were incorporated in another Howells composition, Hymnus Paradisi, written after Howells himself suffered great personal loss in 1935, when his young son died of polio.

Nearly 50 years after the Requiem was written, the score was discovered in the archives of the Royal College of Music. The BBC Singers premiered the work in 1980; publication followed a year later. Using English texts from the Psalms as well as Latin texts, the piece is “marvelously poignant,” according to Laabs. British choral conductor John Bawden notes that “Howells reserves his most complex music for the Latin movements…. In contrast, the psalm-settings are simple and direct, the speech-rhythms of the plain choral writing arising out of the textual inflections.”

Bach’s motet Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (The Spirit gives aid to our weakness), sung by a 24-voice chamber group, opens the program. Bach wrote the piece for the funeral of a mentor, a professor at Leipzig University.

Bel Canto Chorus will perform Voices of the Soul at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 16, at St. Monica Catholic Church, 5681 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Whitefish Bay. Tickets for both the live performance and a livestream are available online.