More than 60 singers and instrumentalists will perform a 20th-century choral masterwork on Remembrance Day in Sechelt.
A production of the Requiem by English composer John Rutter, led by Sechelt-based educator and musician Sara Douglas, began rehearsals in September.
“It was time,” said Douglas to explain her selection of Rutter’s setting of the Latin mass for the dead. The seven-movement piece was first performed in 1985 at a Methodist church in Dallas, Texas, where the composer led the musicians in its debut. Douglas herself was the soprano soloist in a Vancouver rendition in the late 1980s.
Douglas has twice previously led Sunshine Coast singers in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem of 1791, as well as the 1947 requiem setting composed by Maurice Duruflé. “Rutter’s is the next one that is accessible,” she explained. “I’d love to do the Brahms, and [Vancouver composer] David Millard’s, but I’ve been promising that we would sing the Rutter for a while.”
Singers for the Nov. 11 performances were recruited from the Suncoast Phoenix Community Choir. Douglas is the choir’s music director; its chief pianist Tom Kellough joined the bass section for the special performance.
Former members of the Suncoast Phoenix ensemble were enticed to join the production, as well as former attendees of a Sechelt Summer Choir, which Douglas ran annually until five years ago. Some choristers have been singing under Douglas’s direction for 15 years or more.
Rutter dedicated the choral work to his father, who died the year before its composition. The organization of its 45-minute duration is similar to the 1890 requiem by French composer Gabriel Fauré (“but so different from Mozart, the Brahms, or any of the early requiems,” added Douglas). The text is sung in both Latin and English; a high-flying soprano solo in its Pie Jesu movement will be performed by Suncoast Phoenix regular Sarah Moore. Cello soloist Sarah Poon is featured in the richly dark setting of Psalm 130 (“Out of the deep have I called to you, O Lord”), which is often sung at funerals in the Anglican tradition.
Vancouver guest timpanist Martin Fisk will join local violinist Karen Foster, pianist Val Rutter, and flutist Julie Rutter as accompanists.
For Douglas, the performance offered a unique experience: leading a large-scale choral work by a living composer. (Last year the 79-year-old Rutter was awarded the Ivor Novello Award, presented by the largest professional association for music writers in Europe.) As part of her preparations, she studied videos and lectures by the composer himself — an option not available for the Mozart or Duruflé scores.
“It’s been wonderful to watch the series of videos he made to describe his muse for creating this requiem and his influences, from hundreds of years ago to the contemporary period,” said Douglas, “and to listen to him speak about how it should be sung. You would assume that he would want a boy soprano for the soloist. He says a boy soprano is fine, but you can equally have a woman of a more mature sort of voice for it.”
By design, the two performances at St. Hilda’s Anglican Church coincide with Nov. 11’s Remembrance Day traditions. Douglas recalled a childhood memory of grasping her father’s hand at the West Vancouver cenotaph while watching veterans of World War One and World War Two. Their diminishing numbers through the passage of years made the experience of remembrance more urgent — and universal. Immediately after conducting the Duraflé Requiem in 2022, Douglas sped to her mother’s bedside and held her hand as she passed away. “Requiem is a beautiful observance, even of our own lives and loved ones,” she said.
Rutter’s Requiem, scheduled for 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Nov. 11, will be paired with a performance by the Choralations Children Choir (under the direction of Janice Brunson) singing a contemporary setting of John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields. Remaining tickets are on sale at the Sechelt Visitors Centre.
