The Festival Chorale Oregon will be presenting a must-see concert at St. Joseph’s Parish! On Friday, November 21st at 7:30PM this immense choir with orchestra will perform Faure’s Requiem and Distler’s Totentanz as part of a season they call “From Darkness Into Light.”
In
addition to hearing this very beautiful and powerful music, your
attendance at this concert benefits our future pipe organ, as the group
has designated the profits to go to our Casavant organ fundraising!
This is an amazing opportunity to hear great music in the wonderful
acoustics of our own St. Joseph’s sanctuary and also help this wonderful
cause!
Tickets
are $20 for adults, $15 for seniors, and $5 for students, available at
the door or the parish office. Spread the word and be a part of this
special event!!
And this, from the Festival Chorale's website:
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The
concert features three works that will prepare us to move from the
darkness through
dawn into light over the course of the three concerts
this season. First will be Hugo Distler's Totentanz (Dance of Death),
where actors and a small choir portray the power of death over
humanity. After the intermission, the full choir performs two works by
Gabriel Fauré including an audience favorite, Fauré's Requiem,
exploring a different view of death. In talking about his Requiem,
Fauré described death as "a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards
happiness above, rather than as a painful experience."
The Totentanz is
very rarely performed. Besides a small choir, the performance include
several actors, one representing Death, the others his various victims:
president, manager, physician, merchant, soldier, sailor, mystic,
farmer, young lady, old man, and child. The Dance of Death is a literary
and painting genre, portraying the inevitable power of death over all
humanity, often with admonitions to righteousness so you can enter
heaven. The work sounds bone-simple, but those who have actually sung
it, tell you it can give a choir fits.
The
Totentanz comes from roughly 1936. Distler, a German living during the
Third Reich, joined the Nazi party when they came to power, believing
that the party would favor the church. However, the Nazis' hostility to
religion and therefore to sacred music became increasingly clear. As
the Nazis began to harass and clamp down, Distler moved from faculty to
faculty. Furthermore, many of his friends had tried to resist the Nazis
and were arrested. Distler found protection in high circles for a time
but no respite from being called up. He got his wife and children out of
Germany, while he remained behind. The terror and brutality of the
Nazis depressed him. After one final attempt to draft him, he committed
suicide. Ironically, another exemption came through shortly thereafter.
The second part of the concert features two works by Gabriel Fauré: Cantique de Jean Racine and Requiem. Fauré composed Cantique de Jean Racine when
he was only 19 years old, as a graduation requirement. The piece won
Fauré the first prize when he graduated from the École Niedermeyer de
Paris. More than 20 years later, Fauré composed his Requiem, between 1887 and 1890. This choral-orchestra setting of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead is the best known of his large works. Here, the 100-voice choir is joined by a chamber orchestra, and baritone Kevin Helppie. The famous Pie Jesu movement
of the Requiem, traditionally performed by a soprano soloist, will be
sung by the children's choir of Adams Elementary School in Corvallis,
directed by Stephanie McCormick.
Some proceeds from this concert will go toward the Organ Restoration Fund for St. Joseph Church.
