The City of Leicester Singers

Members of the choir

For our November concert the choir will be performing three works – two by the well known composers, Antonio Vivaldi and Joseph Haydn . The third piece is by a perhaps less familiar composer, Johann Nepomuk Hummel . This is a new composer for the City of Leicester Singers.

Besides the concerts for which he is best remembered, Vivaldi also wrote a great deal of music for the voice. Most of this was for the operatic stage but he also wrote sacred music. The Gloria in D RV589 is one of his best known works in 12 sections. The opening movement, Gloria in excelsis Deo, is a joyous chorus. The third movement, Laudamus Te, is a passionate duet for soprano and alto. The work ends with Cum Sancto Spiritu, a powerful double fugue.

Of the same generation as Beethoven, Hummel was one of the most gifted and well-regarded musicians of his day and is probably best known for his trumpet concerto. His Mass in D Major was written purely for chorus. It begins in sombre mood with some adventurous harmonies, but Hummel prefers vigorous movement to meditation often in fugal writing with sharply syncopated rhythms which makes for exhilarating results. The setting of Et Resurrexit in the Credo instead of entering on an immediate fortissimo builds up in a rising crescendo. The final Dona Nobis Pacem, far from conveying peace, is joyfully energetic though it fades to a gentle close.

Haydn's Te Deum is a joyous work in 3 parts, again exclusively for choir. Composed around 1799, its first recorded performance was in 1800 to celebrate Lord Nelson's arrival at Eisenstadt, the home of the Esterhazy family. It begins with what sounds like a football supporters' song and ends with a wonderful double fugue.