VOICES OF THE SOUL, the third performance of Bel Canto Chorus’s 2024-25 season, will feature classical choral music linked to losses of composers’ loved ones in a concert that meditates on the universality of grief, love, and hope.

Requiem | Herbert Howells
Requiem | Maurice Duruflé
Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV 226 | J. S. Bach

British Composer Herbert Howells was no stranger to grief, having lost his son, Michael, at the age of nine. Premiered nearly 50 years after it was first written and hidden in a desk drawer, Howells’s Requiem explores not only pain and loss, but also redemption and hope, setting texts from the traditional Requiem mass alongside Psalms and other canticles. Paired with this work is Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, a work rooted in Gregorian chant and dedicated to the memory of his own father. J.S. Bach’s Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV 226 was written for the memorial service of Bach’s colleague and the godfather of his children, Johann Heinrich Ernesti.