FEATURE
SHADOWS AND LIGHTS: MUSIC FOR REMEMBERING AND REFLECTION Music has always served to complement and amplify the liturgy and the contours of the church year – perhaps never more so than as the days grow shorter and thoughts turn towards winter By V I C T O R I A J O H N S O N
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n many ways music is always a form of time travel, connecting us to people and places of the past, the present and the future. It moves us from dust to glory, from death to resurrection; it gives us a glimpse of the heavenly realms and as well as expanding our imagination it also ministers to the heart. In this season of shadows and lights the music that accompanies the liturgies of the church carries upon its wings many contrasting emotions as autumn turns to winter. As October tips into November we celebrate All Saints, perhaps by singing the jubilant Gaudent in coelis by Sally Beamish (2012) or a Litany for the Saints. Within twenty-four hours, we are remembering the souls of the faithful departed, who now rest on a different shore and in a greater light. We move on to Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday with their solemn silence, melancholic sounds, Last Posts and Reveilles. St Cecilia, the patron saint of music, stands at the door as the liturgical year begins to close on the feast of Christ the King and we start to prepare for the dark blue skies and morning stars of Advent. I want to take us through this quarter season, by reflecting on some of the music which has accompanied me on this journey as a singer and a priest, all of which has been written in the last fifteen years or so. We are part of a living and evolving tradition and though we delight in the music of our ancient
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forebears and its ability to speak into our post-modern condition, we can also cherish the music of the twenty-first century as it enlivens our history and weaves our present memories into an ever-expanding past.
REQUIEM AETERNAM The form of the Requiem, a mass for remembering the dead, is a marker of this season. One would never want to take away from the beauty of the Fauré and Duruflé setting nor those by Victoria, Mozart and Verdi alongside them, but my mind was expanded when I sang Will Todd’s Requiem for Soprano, Electric Guitar and Choir (Tyalgum Press, 2008), originally commissioned for the Fairhaven Singers. It feels as if Todd is playing with fire as the soundworlds of choral music and a virtuosic rock guitar collide, but it is worth the leap into this unusual aural space. On Todd’s website it says that the Requiem was given five stars by Choir & Organ Magazine and an 18 certificate by Aled Jones. There is a rawness within this music and the portrayal of grief in its chaos and confusion, (the Dies Irae is spellbindingly dark), but there is also comfort, consolation, and a haunting and lyrical beauty which leads to peace as the soul is carried on angels’ wings into paradise. A more traditional take on the requiem is captured by Ghislaine Reece-Trapp in her In Paradisum – part of a collection of organ Cathedral Music Autumn 2023
