Gabriel Fauré    -    Requiem
                             -    Cantique de Jean Racine
    Louis Vierne     -    Messe Solennelle

    7:30pm on Saturday 15th November 2025
    Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon

Gabriel Fauré's much loved Requiem is the main work in this concert. It is a work we love singing, so full of beautiful melodies, and was last performed by the Society in 2019.

We will be performing his final version which was completed in 1890 after several revisions. Fauré himself clearly loved this 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." He asked for it to be performed at his own funeral in 1924, and it has remained his best known and most loved work.

We follow his Requiem with another well known work by Fauré, the Cantique de Jean Racine. Written when Fauré was 19 years old and still at music school, it was his entry to a composition competition.

He was fortunate to have Camille Saint-Saëns as one of his teachers and the two became lifelong friends and collaborators. Together they were at the centre of French musical life during a period when French classical music blossomed with composers including Ravel, Duruflé and Widor. Another less well known contemporary was Louis Vierne.

Vierne was a virtuoso organ player and composed works mainly for organ and church choir. His major choral work, the Messe Solennelle, completes our concert. Composed in 1899, it was initially scored for two organs and at the premiere Widor played one organ and the Vierne played the other. We cannot offer that level of stardom but we hope you will enjoy our performance!


Tickets are £20. Children 16 years or under admitted free. You can buy your tickets here on our website, or at the door if seats are still available.