One of the things we do at Robinson, regularly but not often, is to take a classic piece of choral music that’s usually heard as a concert piece, and "perform" it as a liturgy. I think we may have been unique in constructing a liturgy around the wonderful Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms. We did Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man about 3 years ago as a Eucharist for Remembrance. Not so unusual, but still a different experience from a concert, was to do Mozart’s Requiem last year as a liturgy. This weekend, for Remembrance Day, we are doing the same with Fauré’s Requiem. We aren’t a professional choir – it’s a choir of volunteers, run by two of our students. And 68% of our Choir is new this term, so they’ve only been singing together for 5 weeks. It’s a brave move, but it was sounding nice in rehearsal, and we are looking forward to it.

Fauré said some stuff about his Requiem that may well chime with Emerging Church afficionados – he wanted to do something that was a funeral but not as we know it, church but not as we know it. His own faith and belief were an interesting mix of orthodoxy and complete maverick individualism. But then he was an artist, so that’s pretty unsurprising. Creatives are often feared in the Church because they want to reshape things. Odd, perhaps, that displaying creativity – that most God-like of qualities – often sidelines artists within Church circles.  Anyway, here’s what Fauré said about his Requiem:

"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. The music of Gounod has been criticized for its overinclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist’s nature? As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different."

If you want to join us for our Choral Requiem for Remembrance, it’s at Robinson College Chapel, Grange Road, Sunday 12th November. 6pm.