Performance of Mozart Requiem by New York Philharmonic Orchestra
  • Carol
    Posts: 849
    Last night my husband and I went to Lincoln Center and heard an extremely moving performance of this Requiem. It was unique in that the performance of the Requiem was presented first with Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music, then the Requiem, then a Lacrimosa fragment from the Requiem and finally the Ave Verum Corpus. Once the music began there was nothing but music and silence between the 3 pieces. The last notes of the concert were 3 notes on the bell. The translation was projected above the musicians and the final words of the Lacrimosa- "all humanity shall be judged" followed by a slow, tender Ave Verum Corpus were searing! The final silence was weighty. It was a religious experience for us. The choir was from Westminster Choir College and they were great!
    Thanked by 5Incardination mmeladirectress CHGiffen M. Jackson Osborn Choirparts
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,151
    The WCC choir is one of the world's best, for sure.
    Thanked by 1Carol
  • Carol
    Posts: 849
    My nephew has a Bachelors and Master's degree from Westminster Choir College. He graduated 9 or 10 years ago.
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,465
    Mozart is the most Catholic composer ever. Just the Ave Verum Corpus is an entire homily in musical symbolism concerning Transustantiation.
    Thanked by 1Carol
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,465
    Oops transubstantiation
    Thanked by 1Carol
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    The Mozart is nice, but I prefer the Byrd.
    And Byrd was probably far more devout than Mozart
    (not that I think any the less of Mozart and his wonderful music).
    Thanked by 1Carol
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,945
    The Byrd Ave Verum is nonpareil.

    Even compared to that masterwork of W.A. Mozart.

    That's how supernal Byrd was and remains.

    And that's not even considering the context in which Byrd created it - which is an additional dimension of sublimity. (Btw, if Byrd and Mozart have met in the next life, I would not be surprised if Mozart agreed - I suspect Mozart was quite Catholic in that respect that he would have properly appreciated Byrd's situation as a recusant Catholic with an important but nevertheless limited measure of royal favor that could have turned mortally and awfully lethal on a dime, especially after the Gunpowder Plot. Mozart strained under patrons, but his strain was nothing like the fine line Byrd had to walk for a much longer period of time to avoid drawing, hanging, castration, disembowelment and quartering.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFZZMF7SRRo
    Thanked by 4Carol CHGiffen M. Jackson Osborn Choirparts
  • Carol
    Posts: 849
    Thank you for the link, Liam. That is exquisite harmony and may be a better match of music and text.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,945
    The concluding Amen* of Byrd's setting is like mounting Golgotha and beholding the arms of Our Lord suspended between, and uniting, Heaven and earth, as his head nods. Perhaps it may be likened to a polyphonic equivalent of the stretto section of a fugue, a distilled/condensed summation of what precedes it. Beyond tears. Ineffable.

    * IMHO, Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons and their followers in the English school penned some of the loveliest polyphonic Amens in the repertoire.
    Thanked by 2Carol CHGiffen
  • Schönbergian
    Posts: 1,063
    Mozart was just coming into his own as a church composer when he wrote the Ave verum and the Requiem. His earlier church compositions, though fantastic music, clearly play second fiddle to his operas and piano concerti. I suspect we would hear far more Mozart church music nowadays if he had lived another five or ten years at least.
    Thanked by 1Carol
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