Event Category: Forthcoming

Music spanning six centuries


Tickets £15 (concessions £10). Available in advance via Eventbrite

Duruflé: Requiem
Poulenc: Figure humaine
Machaut: Biauté qui toutes autres pere
Machaut: Douce dame jolie
Machaut: Dame, de qui toute ma joie

Image © Papinou – stock.adobe.com

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The Elysian Singers are delighted to be returning to what are surely the two greatest French choral works of the 20th century: the Requiem of Maurice Duruflé, and Figure humaine by his near-contemporary Francis Poulenc.

It is particularly fascinating to combine these very different works in one concert, given that they were composed within a few years of each other, and both have a strong connection with the Second World War. Although Duruflé’s mystical sacred work, steeped in plainsong, originated in a commission from the Vichy régime, it was not completed until 1947, and became seen as a memorial to the war dead. Poulenc, by contrast, set the Resistance poetry of Paul Eluard for 12-part unaccompanied choir, in a work that is in turns highly expressive and demonically angry, concluding in a hymn to Liberty.

We also include some hauntingly beautiful works composed some 600 years earlier by Guillaume de Machaut, the composer and poet who dominated 14th century French culture.

Seven centuries of music for Advent and Christmas

Felix Mendelssohn: Lasset uns frohlocken
Tarik O’Regan: Threshold of Night
Johannes Eccard: Übers Gebirg Maria geht
Matthew Martin: Adam lay y-bounden
14th cent carol (arr. Barry Rose): Angelus ad virginem
Paul Manz: E’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come
Bob Chilcott: Advent Antiphons
HJ Gauntlett (arr. Mann & O’Donnell): Once in royal David’s city
16th cent French tune (arr. Nicholson): Ding dong! merrily on high
Franz Gruber (arr. Hill): Silent night
Peter Warlock (arr. Hill): Bethlehem Down
JF Wade (arr. Hill): O come, all ye faithful
Michael Praetorius (arr. Hiley): Resonet in laudibus
Richard Rodney Bennett: Puer nobis
Richard Allain: What sweeter music
Eric Whitacre: Lux aurumque
Felix Mendelssohn (arr. Robinson): Hark! the herald angels sing

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Including Bob Chilcott’s Advent Antiphons, original works by Tarik O’Regan, Eric Whitacre, Matthew Martin, Richard Allan and Richard Rodney Bennett, and traditional carols for audience participation