Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church in Old Lyme is pleased to invite the public to a Vespers service featuring Gabriel Faure’s Requiem and organ works. The service will take place on March 30, 2025, at 4:00pm.
Premiering in Paris in 1888, Gabriel Faure’s Requiem is one of the most cherished of Requiem masses, often now performed in concert and not within the original context of a burial mass for the departed. Faure wrote of this work, “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.” “Requiem” originates from the first words for this rite in the Roman tradition, requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine (“Give them eternal rest…”), which are the words that open Faure’s Requiem.
The Requiem will be set within an early evening Vespers service, continuing the ancient custom of prayer at the time when daylight faded and the lamps were lit. Vespers has also been called the “evening sacrifice” of prayer. Psalm 141:2, “Let my prayer be set forth in your sight as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice,” has been traditionally associated with vespers.
The Faure Requiem is particularly appropriate to be offered during the season of Lent, when Christians around the world reflect on their mortality through intentional practices of prayer, meditation and fasting. We hope that all who attend this Vespers service may find an oasis of peace and refreshment during these unsettled times.
The Requiem will be conducted by Saint Ann’s Music Director Hector Migliacci, with Simon Holt accompanying on organ. The choir will be comprised of singers from the choirs of Saint Ann’s, the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, St. John’s, Niantic, and The Anglican Singers. In addition to Faure’s Requiem, the program will include organ solos by Kathleen Cooper and Simon Holt, performing works by J L Krebs and J S Bach; Migliacci will also present a trumpet solo by George Thalben-Ball.
All are welcome to this offering of seasonal music.