Gloria

Presented by the Christchurch City Choir and CSO, this programme of moving, powerful and sacred works by some of the most celebrated French composers, will be a feast of choral splendour.

After having returned to Roman Catholicism in the 1930’s, Poulenc produced a steady flow of religious choral work including Gloria.

The Requiem was not composed to the memory of a specific person but, in Fauré’s words, ‘for the pleasure of it’; it was long unknown that the work took over 20 years to assume its present form, the composition extending from 1877 to about 1893, and the re-orchestration for full ensemble being completed only in 1900.

Sacred music at its best but also completely french in style (drawing on that of the grand motet) are  Charpentier’s four extant settings of the Te Deum. The Baroque composer was Musical Director of the Jesuit Church of Saint Louis in Paris when this was written.

A one minute extract:
Beethoven symphony No. 6, Op. 68, F Major from the CSO Lamb and Hayward Masterworks concert 2 May 2009.