University News
Choirs Masterworks Rutter's Requiem April 5
April 2, 2024
MACOMB, IL - The Western Illinois University School of Music will present a Spring Choral Masterworks Concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 5, at Wesley United Methodist Church.
The program will feature John Rutter's Requiem, performed by the Western Illinois University Singers, Concert Choir and Chamber Ensemble, conducted by WIU Music Professor Brian J. Winnie, with WIU Music Assistant Director Elisabeth Marshall, soprano and Gayle Cooper, organ. The WIU Chamber Singers will also perform William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices.
Byrd and Rutter are exemplary composers of English choral music from very different historical periods. This concert features two versions of the mass, one incorporating the traditional mass ordinary text and one that includes the mass ordinary and mass proper texts commonly used in the Requiem Mass.
Byrd was a Renaissance composer and organist most well-known for his sacred motets and masses and further development of the English madrigal.
Rutter's Requiem, written in 1985, was given its first complete performance in Dallas in October of that year. Its focus is not on the final judgment and therefore excludes the traditional Dies Irae (Day of Judgement). Rather, it incorporates movements based on scriptural texts - Psalm 130 (Out of the Deep) and Psalm 23 (The Lord Is My Shepherd), and excerpts from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
This performance is open free for general audience seating.
For more information, call the COFAC Recital Hall office at (309) 298-1843 or visit wiu.edu/recitalhall.
Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing
Connect with us: