SAN DIEGO — With its upcoming performance of Mozart’s “Requiem,” the St. Thérèse of Carmel Parish Choir is undertaking its biggest concert of the decade.
The free, one-hour event will be held at 3 p.m. on Palm Sunday, March 29, inside the church and will be followed by a reception.
The parish choir has offered annual Palm Sunday concerts since 2008, except for a three-year hiatus that began with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Catherine Marshall, the parish’s director of music and the concert’s conductor, reflected on the “Requiem” and how it can help concert-goers to enter into the spirit of Holy Week.
The Southern Cross: What should readers know about this work?
Catherine Marshall: Mozart’s “Requiem” is famous for both its story and its intimate, deep and sublime spirit. Mozart was commissioned to write the Requiem Mass in the summer of 1791, but, by that November, the composer was bedridden with a serious illness. By the time of his death the following month, Mozart had finished the Introit, vocal parts and continuo for the Kyrie, Sequence, and Offertory, only completing eight measures of his famous “Lacrimosa.” Mozart’s wife, Constanze, had one of his students, Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766-1803), complete the work after his death.
How is this a spiritual and explicitly Catholic work?
The Requiem Mass is seen as one of the most “beautiful and expressive in the Roman Missal.” This Catholic Mass for the souls of the faithful departed has attracted composers for centuries, inspiring some of the greatest choral music ever written.
The Requiem, meaning “rest” in Latin, is a Mass made up of an Introit, Kyrie, Gradual, Tract, Sequence, Offertory, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Communion, Responsory and Antiphon. The texts of the Requiem meditate on the Final Judgment and our hope for salvation, depicting the day of wrath, trembling at the Final Judgment, and pleading for the mercy of Jesus. The texts take us through the prayers of liberation for the departed, asking for deliverance from the lion’s mouth, and offering sacrifices of prayers and praise on behalf of the souls we commemorate.
How challenging is it to perform this work?
This work presents several challenges to a church choir. First, there are a lot of notes. Mozart writes “melismas” for the singers, where one syllable of a word is elongated over several changing pitches. For example, when the altos sing the syllable “le” of “Eleison” at the beginning of the Kyrie, they sing 27 notes on just one syllable. These melismatic passages are challenging technically, especially at the fast tempo required. They span the full range of each voice type, requiring each singer to be in their best “vocal shape” and well warmed-up.
Second, Mozart writes complex and masterful fugues. A fugue is where one or two musical themes are sung by multiple sections of the choir, each with independent, imitative entrances, rather than all at the same time. Each voice is singing something important, different from all the other sections.
By the end of our rehearsals, our singers are physically and mentally maxed out, but very gratified.
What distinguishes this upcoming concert from those in past years?
This is one of the largest orchestral forces we will employ in a Palm Sunday concert. In typical years, we are able to hire a small chamber orchestra of eight to 12 players.
Mozart’s “Requiem” calls for a more elaborate array of orchestral instruments, and its significant place in music history warrants us to rise to the occasion. In addition to a string section, we will bring in clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, trombones and timpani.
The chamber orchestra will be 24 players. The choir currently has about 40 singers in it, and this is the first year I am including students from our parish K-8 school, Notre Dame Academy. Our seventh-grade advanced “schola” singers will be joining the parish choir on a couple of movements, including Mozart’s famous “Lacrimosa.”
With the full orchestral and vocal forces combined, the performance will feature roughly 70 musicians.
How can this concert help concert-goers to prepare spiritually for the Paschal Triduum?
This work gives us a chance to appreciate what has become a celebrated piece of art and history. Music, which can serve as a vestment to the Church’s texts, gives us a way to experience, through our senses, the dignity and power of our Universal Church and Christ’s redeeming suffering that we contemplate during Holy Week. There is a serious, dignified and mysterious quality to Mozart’s “Requiem.” When we allow our senses to take in this powerful “vestment” of our Church’s ancient texts, we can come to find deeper connection to our own humanity, and our need for Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection.
What do you hope the faithful will take away from this performance?
Our Church’s history of sacred music can often be seen as something of the past rather than something that can continue to impact our faith today. Sacred music sanctifies us and points us to the glory of God. I hope that each person in attendance is able to have a deeper encounter with God through sacred music.
