Singalong set for Faure’s ‘Requiem’

Members of the Ozark Festival Singers are assembling in Little Rock this week to sing one of the world’s most famous pieces of 19th-century sacred music — Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem’’ in d Minor.

The free event at First United Methodist Church is described by organizers as a “singalong,” not a concert. Members of the public are encouraged not only to listen but to lift up their voices as well.

Sheet music will be available. A familiarity with Latin is helpful but not essential.

It takes roughly 35 minutes to complete the entire piece.

Participants are encouraged to pre-register.

“The purpose of the event is just to get together and sing a masterwork that we all know and love,” said Lorissa Mason, the group’s conductor and co-artistic director. “For people who’ve never done it before, who might have always wanted to, it’s a chance for them to see the score and get a chance to experience the music,” she said.

The Ozark Festival Singers describe themselves as a “revolving ensemble, with participation determined by yearly travel interests and availability.”

The singers performed the “Requiem” in April with choirs from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where Mason serves as director of choral activities and voice area chair.

Choir members welcome the opportunity to practice Faure’s masterwork; they’re scheduled to perform it at Carnegie Hall on June 1.

Faure (1845-1924), a French church organist and composer, wrote his “Requiem” — or Mass for the Dead — in the late 19th century.

Requiem means “rest” and is taken from the first line of the service: “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.” (“Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and light perpetual shine upon them.”)

Originally a somber rite performed solely in sacred spaces, the “Requiem” eventually was adapted by composers and taken to the concert halls of Europe.

Brahms’ “A German Requiem,” written in the 1860s, ditched the Latin text and references to judgment and damnation. It begins with words from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are they that mourn.”

Faure opted to keep the Latin, but shortened the portion of the Mass dealing with the “Day of Wrath.”

The sound of his music is soothing. His “Requiem” was described, during Faure’s lifetime, as a “lullaby of death,” a characterization he heard and repeated approvingly.

While well received in France, the adaptation was not recognized as a masterpiece in the United States until after his death.

Faure’s “Requiem,” which “passed practically unnoticed for some years, is now beginning to be recognized as his greatest,” music critic Compton Pakenham wrote in The New York Times in 1939.

A recording of the “Requiem,” released by RCA Victor in 1941, further popularized it stateside.

A reviewer in the Arkansas Gazette described it at the time as “music of noble simplicity, with a sweetness that is calming and consoling.”

Here in Arkansas, the “Requiem” was performed at Hendrix College in 1948 during a service honoring 28 alumni who had lost their lives during the two world wars.

In London and elsewhere, it was performed in September following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Ozark Festival Singers were in Great Britain themselves last month.

“Probably the most unique thing about the London trip was that every single composer of every single song that we did was there at rehearsals and at the concert, so we got to work with them,” Mason said.

That included Paul Mealor, a Welsh composer who has written music for both a royal wedding (Prince William and Kate Middleton) as well as a coronation (King Charles III, in May).