The Rice Chorale commemorates Sept. 11

By Garrett Schumann     9/4/08 7:00pm

At 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 11, the Rice Chorale will perform Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in the Edythe Bates Grand Organ Recital Hall in Alice Pratt Brown Hall (the Shepherd School of Music Building).This is the sixth year Tom Jaber has led Rice University's only choral group in a memorial concert honoring those who died in the infamous terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The first of these concerts, in 2002, was part of a worldwide event that coordinated the performance of Mozart's famous Requiem at the exact time of the first aircraft's impact into World Trade Center towers. In years since, the Chorale has presented requiem settings by Brahms, Rutter and Durufle, among others.

From a humanistic perspective, these annual performances are a beautiful demonstration of the Rice community's compassion. Anyone is welcome to join the Chorale, regardless of that person's affiliation with Rice or the Shepherd School. Moreover, the musical presentations pay respect to the university's unfortunate familiarity with tragedy. Dealing with death, whether that of a family member, friend or stranger is an experience that binds all people together. The Requiem Masses presented by the Rice Chorale are tributes not only to all whom we know who are dead, but to the power of music to affect our emotions, as well. Fauré's Requiem gives us a particularly unique response to loss, providing us with a wide palette of moods, wholly designed to alleviate every part of a grieving conscience.

Some of you may be wondering why composers have such a fondness for Requiem Masses, why so many have been written and why so many are remembered as great pieces. To start, the universality of death and the influence of the Catholic liturgy on Western music made the Requiem Mass a popular pick for composers throughout history. Even when a piece is not connected to the Catholic Church, the gravity of the Mass's subject matter makes it an attractive and evocative topic for musical exploration. In fact, two of my favorite Requiem settings were not composed with the intent to uphold the Catholic tradition: The German Requiem by Johannes Brahms and Requiem by Gyorgy Ligeti.

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In a superficial sense, Fauré's Requiem is traditional. He sets most of the original Latin text (unlike Brahms, who decided on German) and uses an accessible musical language, by modern standards (unlike Ligeti). Fauré does alter the text slightly by omitting the Dies Irae poem, one of the most famous parts of the liturgy. The piece, on the whole, sounds very French, and is full of lush sonorities whose distinct character comes from Fauré's extensive training in early church music. He commonly draws on the ecclesiastical modes, the tonal foundation of music before keys were invented, for interesting scalar figures and to decorate chords.

My only criticism is that it is very subdued and relaxed. There are no violently rhythmic movements like the "Confutatis" or "Dies Irae" from Mozart's Requiem. Although you will surely feel awed by the sublimity of Fauré's harmonies, it is possible you could find the piece too gentle. Fauré, of course, meant for the piece to sound that way and said, "It is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience."

Everyone who can make it to the concert should, even if you aren't interested in the music and just want to honor the victims of our nation's last great tragedy. Hopefully, those who come to hear the Chorale on Sept. 11 will find themselves not only moved by the music, but proud of their colleagues and friends from Rice who make it a point each year to honor our nation's dead.

Although the concert is expressly meant to honor victims of 9/11, it speaks to a greater truth: that you don't need to be educated or trained to participate in and gain from a great piece of art. Everyone who hears and sings the Fauré Requiem on Thursday will be moved in some way. Most of them will not be musicians, most of them will not be familiar with the music they hear (or even sing), but because of the power of music on a fundamental level, we will all learn what Fauré embedded in his Requiem: You can find beauty even in the darkest of times.

Garrett Schumann is a junior at Hanszen college.

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