Fauré Requiem performance

For lovers of beautiful music, there is an opportunity in Preston 

to hear Faure's Requiem Mass setting 

this coming 

Saturday 10th November 

12 noon

at

the Church of the English Martyrs

18 Garstang Road

PR1 1NA

 But not just any performance. 

Hear it in its original intended context -

- that of the ancient Latin Mass.

Faure's impetus for composing the work is thought to have been the death of his father in 1885, 

and his mother's death two years later, on New Year's Eve 1887. 

The first version was performed on 16 January 1888 

for the funeral of his friend, Joseph Lesoufaché, an architect, at La Madeleine, Paris.

The Madelaine Church in Paris.

The composer said of the work: 

"It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience."

 "Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."

In 1924 the Requiem, in its full orchestral version, was performed at Fauré's own funeral. 

English Martyrs Church 

where the Octavius Choir will sing Faure's Requiem Mass 

to the accompaniment of the fine pipe organ in the church.

Entry is free but a collection will be taken up.