University of King's College Chapel Choir For All The Saints 2016
Directed by Paul Halley

The University of King’s College Chapel Choir opens its 2016-17 King’s at the Cathedral concert series with the double-choir Mass in G minor by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Composed in 1921, this 20th-century masterwork is full of the rich harmonies associated with the composer in his most 'English summertime' moments, but the origins of the piece are also in the revival of English polyphony and with Vaughan Williams' identification of his music with 'the imperishable glories of English prose'.

The concert will also include the beloved Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber (1936/1967), the prayerful and haunting Litanies à la Vierge noir by Francis Poulenc (1936), the motet O quam gloriosum by renaissance English composer William Byrd (c. 1580), and glorious hymns accompanied by the Cathedral’s great pipe organ and the Maritime Brass Quintet.

This performance will be the choir’s eighth annual concert celebrating All Saints and All Souls. Featured pieces in the past have been Rachmaninov’s All Night Vigil (1915), Requiem Mass settings by Duruflé (1947), Fauré (1890), Schnittke (1975), Victoria (1603), and de la Rue (c. 1500), and the Mass for Double Choir by Swiss composer Frank Martin (1921). Halley and the University of King’s College Chapel Choir continue to present mass settings that are otherwise rarely, if ever, heard performed live in Nova Scotia.