USC Aiken
USC Aiken Concert Choir Presents Fall Concert
Aiken, SC (10/29/2019) — The University of South Carolina Aiken Concert Choir presents its annual fall concert on Nov. 9, at 7:30 p.m., in the sanctuary of St. John's United Methodist Church, located at 104 Newberry Street, SW, in Aiken.
Tickets are $10 and will be available at the door. All USC Aiken students and faculty members with valid IDs will be admitted free.
The university's concert choir will perform Dan Forrest's Requiem for the Living. The performance will include a professional chamber orchestra and guest singers as well as USC Aiken students.
"Dan Forrest's Requiem is beloved, despite it being a recent composition," said Dr. Joel Scraper chair of the department of visual and performing arts and director of choral activities at USC Aiken.
The composer explains that "a requiem, at its core, is a prayer for rest, traditionally, for the deceased;" however, the five movements of his piece, composed in 2013, form a narrative just as much for the living, and their own struggle with pain and sorrow, as for the dead.
Forrest breaks down the composition for audiences:
The opening movement sets the traditional Introit and Kyrie texts - pleas for rest and mercy - using ever-increasing elaborations on a simple three-note descending motive.
The second movement, instead of the traditional Dies Irae, sets scriptural texts that speak of the turmoil and sorrow which face humanity, while yet invoking musical and textual allusions to the Dies Irae.
"This movement juxtaposes aggressive rhythmic gestures with long, floating melodic lines, including quotes of the Kyrie from the first movement," Forrest says.
The Agnus Dei is performed next, which is a departure from the usual liturgical order. It is a plea for deliverance and peace.
Following that, the Sanctus becomes a response to this redemption.
"The Sanctus offers three different glimpses of the 'heavens and earth, full of Thy glory," all of which develop the same musical motive: an ethereal opening section inspired by images of space from the Hubble Space Telescope, a stirring middle section inspired by images of our own planet as viewed from the International Space Station, and a closing section which brings the listener down to Earth, where cities teem with the energy of humanity," the composer states.
The Lux Aeterna which then closes the work portrays light, peace, and rest, for both the deceased and the living.
As part of.its fall performance, the USC Aiken Concert Choir will also perform a new commission from American composer Elaine Hagenberg, There Was a Time.
"This work was commissioned two years ago in honor of child who died tragically," Scraper explains.
He adds that the text is from Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth.
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