On Friday evening the American Festival Chorus and Orchestra will celebrate its seventh season with an all-French concert program. They will present a night of choral masterpieces by French composers Gabriel Fauré and Francis Poulenc at the Ellen Eccles Theatre.
Craig Jessop, the founder and conductor of the American Festival Chorus, said this music is distinctively French in its sensitivity. The first piece on the program is Fauré’s “Requiem,” which Jessop described using such contrasting adjectives as haunting, serene and elevating.
“The Fauré ‘Requiem’ is one of the most sublime compositions ever written by any person. It speaks not to the horror of death, but to the hope and the peace and the reconciliation, of the transient nature of death,” Jessop said.
The second piece on the program, Poulenc’s “Gloria,” couldn’t be more contrasting. It is a rowdy, though not entirely irreligious, piece containing moments of what Jessop called "pure, unadulterated joy.”
“He said two things inspired him in the writing of this,” Jessop said. “He said he once saw a group of monks having a rousing game of soccer in their habits and it tickled his fancy. The other is a famous Italian, Baroque painter who loved to paint these fat little cherubs sticking their tongues out at the Madonna or whoever might be there to see.”
For more information about the concert, visit the American Festival Chorus website.