Durham Singers: The Souls of the Righteous: Music of remembrance and consolation at St Cuthbert's Chapel, Durham on Saturday 9th November 2019

Please note: This concert is in the past and has already taken place.

Durham Singers: The Souls of the Righteous

Music of remembrance and consolation

Add to my Calendar 09-11-2019 19:30 09-11-2019 21:30 36 Durham Singers: The Souls of the Righteous Music has been used throughout the ages to help people and communities move through mourning to remembrance, consolation and hope. Sitting between personal commemorations of the dead at the church festivals of All Saints and All Souls days and public acts of remembrance on Armistice day, the Durham Singers concert on 9 November draws on themes of both collective and private mourning, from the seventeenth century and the present day.   For baroque composers, funeral processions meant brass instruments, and for this concert, the Durham Singers are joined by the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, whose period instruments add their impressive  sonorites to music by Purcell, Schütz and Bach.  Purcell’s funeral music for the much-loved Queen Mary was soon heard again at his own funeral later in 1695. Nearly three hundred years later the outstanding English composer Herbert Howells was commissioned to write an anthem for the memorial service for President John F. Kennedy. ‘Take him, earth for cherishing’, is one of his most dramatic and haunting works, opening out from a simple dirge at the beginning to a work of enormous power and range. Balancing Howells is quiet and gentle anthem by Francis Pott, ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God’ , composed for Winchester Cathedral and somehow enfolding singers and audience in a harmonic evocation of the ‘hands of God’. This beautiful, slow rhapsody draws the programme towards a hopeful, light-infused close with Bach’s ‘Jesu Christ, mein’s Lebens Licht’.  St Cuthbert's Chapel, Durham DD/MM/YYYY

Details

St Cuthbert's Chapel
College Road
Ushaw College
Durham
County Durham
DH7 9RH
England

Saturday 9th November 2019
7:30 PM

Programme

Henry Purcell – Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, Z.860
Heinrich Schütz – Selig sind die Toten, SWV 391
Heinrich Schütz – Fili mi, Absalom, SWV 269
Herbert Howells – Take him, earth for cherishing
Heinrich Schütz – Die mit Tränen säen werden mit Freuden ernten, SWV 378
Heinrich Schütz – Wohl dem, der den Herren fürchtet, SWV 44
Francis Pott – The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God
Johann Sebastian Bach – O Jesu Christ, mein Lebens Licht (motet), BWV 118

Performers

Julian Wright – Conductor

Durham Singers
English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble

Programme Note

Music has been used throughout the ages to help people and communities move through mourning to remembrance, consolation and hope. Sitting between personal commemorations of the dead at the church festivals of All Saints and All Souls days and public acts of remembrance on Armistice day, the Durham Singers concert on 9 November draws on themes of both collective and private mourning, from the seventeenth century and the present day.

For baroque composers, funeral processions meant brass instruments, and for this concert, the Durham Singers are joined by the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, whose period instruments add their impressive sonorites to music by Purcell, Schütz and Bach.

Purcell’s funeral music for the much-loved Queen Mary was soon heard again at his own funeral later in 1695. Nearly three hundred years later the outstanding English composer Herbert Howells was commissioned to write an anthem for the memorial service for President John F. Kennedy. ‘Take him, earth for cherishing’, is one of his most dramatic and haunting works, opening out from a simple dirge at the beginning to a work of enormous power and range. Balancing Howells is quiet and gentle anthem by Francis Pott, ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God’ , composed for Winchester Cathedral and somehow enfolding singers and audience in a harmonic evocation of the ‘hands of God’. This beautiful, slow rhapsody draws the programme towards a hopeful, light-infused close with Bach’s ‘Jesu Christ, mein’s Lebens Licht’.

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