My Spirit Rejoices! | Celebrating 2024 Choral Anniversaries | Oxford Pro Musica Singers
At the heart of our uplifting programme is Jean Langlais’s mighty Messe Solennelle, marking both the 75th anniversary of its composition and that important French Revolutionary commemoration, Bastille Day! Langlais was one of France’s most significant twentieth-century organists, and his mass – originally scored for two organs! – ranges from a spare, almost ancient soundworld through complex fugal moments to the celestial tones of the Benedictus and ‘Dona nobis pacem’, always driven by exciting and dramatic iterations with the organ.
Constellated around this centrepiece is a series of jubilant pieces by other anniversarians, including the mellifluous Cantique de Jean Racine marking 100 years since the death of Langlais’s compatriot Gabriel Fauré.
From the UK we celebrate another centenarian, the influential Charles Villiers Stanford, here represented by his monumental Latin Magnificat in eight parts, in company with Holst’s luminous Nunc Dimittis – just wait till the final page! – Bairstow’s atmospheric Let all mortal flesh keep silence (150 years since their births), and a contemporary setting of ‘Crossing the Bar’ by Craig McLeish to commemorate 200 years of the RNLI.
Finally, casting our eyes (and ears) back across the channel we pay tribute to the Swiss composer Frank Martin, who died 50 years ago, with two movements of his celebrated Mass for Double Choir, and the Austrian Anton Bruckner (200 years since his birth), in two of his most beautiful and dramatic motets: Christus Factus Est and Ave Maria.
We do hope you will join us in the suitably glittering surrounds of Exeter College Chapel to hear this programme guaranteed to lighten your spirit and restore your joie de vivre!
Oxford Pro Musica Singers
Conductor: Mark Jordan
Exeter College Chapel, Oxford
Sunday 14 July 2024, 5.00 pm
Concert Programme
Stanford: Latin Magnificat for eight-part choir in Bb
Bairstow: Let all mortal flesh keep silence
Bruckner: Christus Factus Est & Ave Maria
Holst: Nunc Dimittis
Frank Martin: Sanctus & Benedictus from Mass for double choir
Fauré : Cantique de Jean Racine
Langlais: Messe Solennelle
Craig McLeish: Crossing the Bar
£15, £5 students / under 25
