St Albans Bach Choir - There was a Child: Jonathan Dove & Requiem: Gabriel Fauré

Jonathan Dove’s There Was a Child (2009) is a powerful, poignant, and ultimately uplifting choral masterpiece written as a tribute to a friend’s son who drowned while snorkelling in Thailand in 1999, aged only 19. Everyone sings from a young age, so it was fitting that this is a choral work providing both joyous celebration and heartfelt emotion.  Dove uses extracts of work from some ten poets to trace the journey from birth through the messy, brilliant chaos of childhood, up to the precipice of adulthood.  Walt Whitman’s poem, “There was a child went forth,” which gives the work its title, is a radiant vision of a child absorbing everything they encounter, becoming part of the world and living on through everything they touched. Other poets include Wordsworth, Keats, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare and Traherne. This choral masterpiece uses the soprano soloist as the voice of the mother, while the tenor represents the son. A children's choir joins the adult choir to bring a gritty, playful energy that grounds the piece in reality rather than sentimentality.

Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, was written following the death of his mother. Composed between 1887 and 1890, it offers a stark and deliberate contrast to the thunderous, terrifying apocalyptic visions found in the Requiems of Mozart, Berlioz and Verdi, emphasizing peace, rest, and consolation. Fauré himself famously described his Requiem as "a lullaby of death," viewing the transition from life not as a painful end, but as a gentle, happy deliverance to a higher state.  This Requiem has intimate scale, understated elegance and luminous soaring melodies resulting in a profoundly moving masterpiece.