Fauré Requiem

To commemorate Remembrance Sunday, the Sterndale Singers perform one of the best loved Requiem Masses.

The Requiem by Gabriel Fauré, written in the late 1880s is known for its general air of serenity, a deliberate move by Fauré who wrote that he saw death, not as a 'painful experience' but a 'happy deliverance' reflecting on his 'years of accompanying funeral services on the organ' and wanting to write 'something different'. The Requiem is, as Aaron Coland later put it, a 'profound meditation'; the overall progression, as well as the shape of several movements, is from reflective solemnity to spiritual uplift.

This performance on Remembrance Sunday gives an opportunity to reflect on the horrors of war but also Fauré's aspiration of 'happy deliverance' rather than the terror of death.

Programme

• Gabriel Fauré: Requiem