Concert will feature Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light Requiem and three other memorable and uplifting compositions

A beautiful piece of music that speaks to anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one, Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light Requiem, will be performed at the Exmouth Choral Society Spring Concert on Saturday, May 11.

The evening will also include Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and Eric Whitacre’s Seal Lullaby, making the concert a memorable and uplifting experience.

Howard Goodall has an extraordinarily wide range of composing credits, from the music for The Vicar of Dibley to specially-commissioned choral works. He explained that when he was asked to write the Eternal Light Requiem he decided to move away from the traditional medieval way of looking at death. The result is a work that blends poems from across the last 500 years to shed new light on the requiem concepts of peace, everlasting light, grief, comfort and faith in an afterlife. In his words, the work is intended to “mark the passing of a precious life and to honour it with dignity compassion and beauty”.

As we approach the eightieth anniversary of the start of the Second World War, and in the wake of last year’s centenary of the end of the First World War, Goodall’s Requiem reminds us not only of the dead of these two world wars, but the living who were left to grieve for their lost loved ones. Howard Goodall’s Requiem seeks to answer the questions of what, in the 21st Century a requiem is for, who it is for and what it means.

The concert will span 100 years of choral music: Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs was first performed in 1911. It builds through a variety of styles to a triumphant hymn of praise while Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb was composed in 1943. It was based on a curious poem by Christopher Smart, while Eric Whittaker’s Seal Lullaby, composed in 2004, was to be part of the soundtrack of an animated film that was never made.

The concert will take place at Holy Trinity Church, Rolle Road, Exmouth at 7.30pm on Saturday, May 11.

KEN CLAYTON