Choral Society present concert at All Saints for first time
The Mullingar Choral Society performs two concerts a year. The most well known is the Christmas Concert which, through the generosity of successive Bishops of Meath, takes place in the Cathedral of Christ the King each year. It features the usual compliment of festive music. The Spring Concert is different in that it is a choral concert of usually religious music. For the first time, it is taking place at All Saints Church under the patronage of the Rev Ian Horner and the Select Vestry, who continue to allow the society to practice in their church hall.
The programme will begin with Felix Mendelsson’s setting of verses from Psalm 55. He was born a Jew and, along with his father and siblings, was Baptised into the Lutheran Church as a boy. ‘Here my Prayer’, which begins the Psalm, is one of his later works, first performed in German in 1844 and the following year, in London, in English.
Queen Victoria was his greatest admirer and it came as something of a shock to her and Prince Albert when he died, aged only 38, in 1847. She thought he was the greatest composer since Mozart, who died at a similarly early age. It includes perhaps the most famous soprano section ‘O for the wings of a dove’. This will be performed by Joanna Fagan, who has sung with the Society many times.
A much longer-lived composer was Joseph Hayden (1732-1809), who was innovative in so many ways and left a huge body of music. Most of his career was as director of music for the princely Esterházy, who were Hungarian. The Esterháza Palace was remote and, until 1770, Haydn’s music was the property of successive princes who were fond of music.
Thereafter he was free to publish his own music but still confined to the Palace. It was not until 1790, when Prince Nikolaus died, that he was able to travel to Vienna, Paris and London, where he was hailed as a genius. He was a deeply religious man and composed a lot of masses.
The 1778 ‘Little Organ Mass’ is so called because of the solo organ part which accompanies the Benedictus. The soprano part is one of the most beautiful composed in the 18th century. Joanna will perform this with Charles Marshall, organist at St Anne’s Church in Dawson Street, Dublin and a resident of Mullingar.
Music director, Fintan Farrelly, likes to surprise us and so the Hayden Mass is followed by ‘A Little Jazz Mass’ by Bob Chilcott (b.1955). He too is religious and has composed a lot of church music, particularly for children. He began singing at King’s College Cambridge and later joined the famous King’s Singers. He says in his notes to this Mass, ‘I have always loved Jazz’. It was first performed by the Crescent City Choral Festival Choir in ‘that great jazz city of New Orleans’.
Another long-lived composer was Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), who was to see the Jazz age. Unlike Mendelsson, Haydn and Bob Chilcott, he was not religious, although his famous Requiem might bely that fact. As a young man, he entered a competition to write a setting for the Canticle of Jean Racine, the 17th century French dramatist. It was written for the night time service of Compline and begins with the words, ‘Verbe égal au Très Haut’; ‘Word, one with The Highest’ which echoes the first words of St John’s Gospel. Another line, ‘Dissipe le sommeil d’une âme languissante’ (Banish the slumber of a weary soul) reflects its purpose as a prayer before sleep. Fauré, at age only 19, won: a promise of great things to come!
The Spring Concert is at All Saints Church, Mullingar, Saturday, May 16, at 7.30pm.