Composer Dan Forrest

VIBRANT GOOD FRIDAY REQUIEM AT CHURCH OF THE ROSES

It’s always a thrill to hear something wonderful for the first time. For this year’s Good Friday March 29 concert at Church of the Roses, conductor Carol Menke chose composer Dan Forrest’s celebrated Requiem for the Living, a memorable work. Composed in 2013, this beautiful, petite requiem (five movements in forty minutes) is a deeply emotional and gratifying piece and received a stunning performance by Ms. Menke and the Roses Chancel Choir, Cantiamo and Chamber Orchestra. Happily, this concert was well attended, the church nearly full.

Requiem for the Living, a powerful work for all time, not just its own era, fully encompasses the quintessential 20th-21st century neo-romantic choral style with fresh and strong melodies for all voice parts, fulsomely emotional, heart-tugging harmonies and colorful, dramatic orchestration. Besides having melodic, harmonic and textual vision, the composer is also a master orchestrator, utilizing many dramatic effects to define and punctuate both music and text: shimmering strings, commanding organ, plucked harp, calling horn and answering winds, foreboding ostinatos, angelic tinkling bells and roaring timpani.

This being a requiem for the living rather than the dead, Mr. Forrest selected those sections of the Catholic Mass and Requiem Mass that best express the human condition and our experiences of prayer, suffering, sacrifice, mercy, hope and praise: “Introit-Kyrie”, “Agnus Dei”, “Sanctus”, and “Lux Aeterna”. For his second movement he substituted “Vanitas, vanitatum” (“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity”), King Solomon’s words from The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, in place of the usual “Dies Irae”. A truncated version of the mass’s five movements can be reduced to: “Lord have mercy and grant them eternal peace. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!
Lamb of God, take away our sin and grant us rest. Holy, holy, holy—heaven and earth are full of thy glory! Hosanna in the highest! May light eternal shine upon them and grant them eternal rest.”

The musical-dramatic structure of this piece is strikingly effective because it is so well crafted and beautiful. The pleading Kyrie, the pounding Vanitas, the ethereal Agnus Dei, the bright and joyful Sanctus (which features an extraordinary gradual crescendo from beginning to end) and the calm final Lux aeterna, each movement is fashioned on the meaning of the text and presents discernible order and thematic development.

This performance was thrillingly executed by a powerful choir of thirty-five and an instrumental ensemble of eight solo musicians: Terrie Baune, violin; Kathleen Reynolds, flute; Abigail Summers (cello); Laura Reynolds, oboe; Wendy Tamis, harp; hornist Suzanne Chasalow; Allen Biggs, percussion; and Robert Young, organ.

Soloists mezzo-soprano Liesel Hall, soprano Connie Vocature, and tenor Drew Bolander all sang impeccably and serenely with lovely tone and grace. Ms. Menke guided the proceedings with her usual energy, sensitivity, emotional investment, and laser focus on phrasal tension, dynamics, projection of text, vocal beauty and blend. It was a memorable forty minutes.