Saint Louis Chamber Chorus - "The Ancients Speak: Latin"
Co-Sponsor: Department of Classics.
Philip Barnes, Artistic Director.
For ticketing information, please visit: http://www.chamberchorus.org/
The Saint Louis Chamber Chorus continues its 58th season with a program designed to remind us why Latin poetry is so engrained in the Western canon and why the Latin language is an ideal vehicle for the human voice. The concert will feature musical settings of Latin poetry written over a span of fourteen hundred years. The settings themselves range from the 16th century to the present and include a world premiere and a contribution from a “darkwave/gothic rock band!”
Jacopone da Todi's “Stabat Mater” will be heard in a version composed by Stephen Paulus specifically for the Chamber Chorus and praised as one the choir's finest commissions. The concert's world premiere is a setting of a Catullus poem by Ugis Praulins, who studied both Latin and music in his native Latvia. Now he is not only a leading composer but has played for many years in a “folk rock” band. Coincidentally, though perhaps unlikely, Monica Richards and her band “Faith and the Muse,” provide the Chorus with a haunting rendition of Tennyson's poem “Frater, Ave Atque Vale,” set in Catullus's home of Sirmio.
The verse of Horace, poet to the court of the Emperor Augustus, has been put to music by many composers through the years. The audience will hear the Chamber Chorus perform pieces by Hungarian Zoltan Kodaly, American Randall Thompson and Czech emigré Antonin Tucapsky.
A pre-concert conversation with Professor Tim Moore, department chair of Classics, will introduce the program's repertoire. The discussion begins at 2:30 P.M. and is free to ticket holders.