Mozart's Requiem

The Schola are currently busy learning Mozart's wonderful setting of the Requiem for a concert next Friday at St John's, Smith Square. The concert is in aid of The Cardinal Hume Centre. There are just a few tickets left if you would like to attend!

The Requiem was not composed entirely by Mozart  as he died midway through writing it, halfway though the 'Lacrymosa' it is said. 

The work was completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, a friend of Mozart's, but perhaps not, as was claimed by Mozart's widow Constanza, his student. Constanza may have been trying to give validity to the completed work by suggesting that Mozart and Süssmayr had worked on it together but there is no evidence that they had discussed the work prior to Mozart's death.

Constanze's problem was that she could only collect the commission fee from Count Walsegg, the very unusual nobleman who had asked for the work (intending to claim he had composed it himself!), if it was thought to be truly by Mozart. His widow appears to have gone as far as to forge Mozart's signature on the final page of the manuscript, even though it is dated 1792, the year after he had died!

Süssmayr claimed that he completed the work following 'scraps of paper' left by Mozart, sketches of what he intended to compose. This is true to an extent but there are movements that Süssmayr composed in their entirety, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei - it does rather show as they are decidedly less good than the rest of the work.

It is ironic that Süssmayr was not Mozart's student but in fact a pupil of Antonio Salieri, the court composer in Vienna for much of Mozart's time there in the 1780s. Poor Salieri, of course, is accused of murdering Mozart in the famous play and film by Peter Shaffer, Amadeus. In the play, it is Salieri himself who is seen at Mozart's deathbed helping him to complete the Requiem, as in the wonderful scene below where we see Mozart (with an American accent) dictating the 'Confutatis'.

Much of the storyline of Shaffer's play was created by Constanze Mozart herself in the years following Mozart's death in an attempt to make the work appeal to the Viennese public. She stated that Mozart did not know who had commissioned the work, that he was convincied he was composing his own Requiem, that a masked figure delivered the money for the piece, and that he was composing the work on his death bed. Little of this is thought to be true.

But add in a jealous court composer, someone gifted enough to recognise Mozart's true genius but unable to emulate his musical achievements, and you have the plot of the wonderful Amadeus.

This is perhaps my favourite scene from the film.

Vaughan to house Organ from Westminster Abbey

The Vaughan is to provide a new home for a chamber organ belonging to Westminster Abbey. The organ dates from the 18th Century and was formerly housed in the Abbey's Lady Chapel.

This picture shows the organ in its new home in the Vaughan's Oratory.

The instrument was built by a Swiss organ-builder called John Snetzler (1710-1785) and is actually a composite of two instruments. The casework dates from 1766-7 and was originally built for Mr Kershaw (1737-1806), a Yorkshireman with extensive business interests, who lived in Halifax.  The pipework came from an organ built by Snetzler in 1759 for Clyffe House, Tincleton near Dorchester, Dorset.

A note in ink in an eighteenth-century hand, pasted onto the front of the soundboard, records:

Built by Snetzler/In 1766-7 For/Mr Kershaw [of] Halifax at/The same time the/Halifax old Church/Organ was Built. The organ has been documented by several authors, who identified that the soundboard dated from 1759.  

The instrument was formerly housed in the Lady Chapel (also known as the Henry VII Chapel) at Westminster Abbey. This chapel, paid for by Henry VII in his will, and completed in 1520, is perhaps most renowned  for its vaulted ceiling (picture below), regarded when it was built as the wonder of the world. The chapel holds the remains not only of Henry VII but also Elizabeth I, James I, Charles II and Mary, Queen of Scots.

It is a great honour for the Vaughan to have been asked to house this historic instrument and we are very grateful to the Dean of the Abbey, the Very Reverend John Hall, and the Organist of the Abbey, James O'Donnell (who is a patron of the Vaughan's Schola) for offering it to us. They were keen that the instrument be used liturgically and in its new home in the chapel it will be played during the School's Benediction and other services.

Lent Term 2015

The term that is about to start is full of music events  - enough I think to keep us busy over the next twelve weeks!

 

The Schola will sing Mozart's Requiem at St John's Smith Square at 7.30 pm on Friday 30 January. This concert is being given in memory of MP Paul Goggins in support of The Cardinal Hume Centre. This video of a wonderful performance in 1991 (sung from memory by the choir although the conductor has a score!) contains at least one rather familiar face.

The Annual Music Competition will run throughout the term. With Dominic Doutney no longer in the School it might be a little more open than in previous years! The Final is at 6 pm on Wednesday 18 March, adjudicated by Ralph Allwood MBE.

Our work with Southbank Sinfonia this term will include a composing workshop and then a side-by-side performance of Mahler's Fourth Symphony. This will be the first time that the Vaughan's orchestral players have tacked Mahler, music of extraordinary scale and emotional range.

The concert is at 6 pm Thursday 12 February at St John's, Waterloo. We need to buy a tam tam for the performance - we already have the sleigh bells!

The Big Band Evening (Friday March 6) is devoted to Frank Sinatra and will see lots of our vocalists getting up and giving their personal tribute to Old Blue Eyes, who would have been 100 this year! (When is Elvis's centenary?).

The Schola are to sing in several wonderful settings this term, including twice for the Vigil Mass at Westminster Cathedral (6pm, January 24 - music by Palestrina,  and March 21 - music by Byrd). Wednesday 4 February promises to be busy with some of the younger boys singing with the Bach Choir in Carmina Burana in the Royal Festival Hall, whilst next door in the Queen Elizabeth Hall the older boys will sing in An Evening with Rick Wakeman of Yes fame.

Early in March (Monday 9 March, 5.30 pm) they travel to Cambridge to sing Evensong in Kings College Chapel.

A few days before (Monday 2 March, 1 pm) they give a concert, alongside our friends in Tiffin Boys Choir and Trinity Boys Choir, at the Royal Opera House,  Covent Garden.  Our three choirs have provided the boys for the Royal Opera productions for the past fifteen years or so and it will be lovely for them to sing together for the first time, in the amazing setting of the Paul Hamlyn Hall at the Opera House. 

Meanwhile, some of the boys will be preparing to sing the solo roles in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and 26 trebles will have the chance to sing in the production of King Roger, a Polish opera  by Karol Szymanowski.

The main showcase for the instrumentalists will come on March 12 (7 pm) when the junior and senior pupils will perform in the Spring Concert, held again in the wonderful Wathen Hall in St Paul's School. Two works to be performed that evening are particularly exciting: Senior Strings are to play Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis whilst First Orchestra will perform the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (an amazing performance below from Gustavo Dudamel and his Venezuelan Orchestra).

And throughout the term we will all be busy learning to sing Elgar's great masterpiece The Dream of Gerontius for the Centenary Concert, to be given at 7.30 pm on March 24 at St James's, Spanish Place. This extraordinary work, a setting of the Blessed John Henry Newman's poem, traces a souls journey after death. Elgar as he finished this quintessentially Catholic work, wrote on the score, 'This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another: my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory'. There was never any doubt that this would be the work that we would perform to mark the Vaughan's 100th year. I hope that you will be able to join us for the performance - and if you are a pupil, come and sing in it. It will stay with you for ever. 

(Though there is no balloon drop at the end I'm afraid.)

Highlights of 2014

As we begin 2015 here are some of the more memorable moments from the music-making at the Vaughan during 2014.

January saw a concert of music based on the Psalms given by the Schola at Kings College, London.



In February the School Choir traveled to Madrid. This video was taken in Toledo Cathedral.

In March the orchestra and Schola gave a concert alongside Southbank Sinfonia in the Jerwood Hall, LSO St Lukes at the Barbican, the home of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Also in March the Spring Concert saw, amongst lots of other music, a very accomplished complete performance of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings by the Senior String Ensemble, a remarkable achievement for any school string orchestra.

In the Easter Concert at St John's, Smith Square, Dominic Doutney in the Upper Sixth performed Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto.


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Meanwhile, boys have performed at both the Royal Opera House and at English National Opera.

In May the Big Band returned to the world famous Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho.

In the Summer Term the School staged Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story.

September saw the Centenary Mass at Westminster Cathedral, celebrating the 100 years of Cardinal Vaughan.

And a few weeks later in October we all gathered in the Royal Albert Hall for the Centenary Celebration.  Clips from the DVD will be available soon but in the meantime these audience videos give an idea of this extraordinary occasion!

In November the Schola sang for the All Souls Day Eucharist at Westminster Abbey.

And there was a wonderful St Cecilia Concert at St Paul's, Hammersmith.

The year ended with a splendid Carol Service at Our Lady of Victories in December.