St. Cecilia Chamber Choir celebrates 30 years of fine choral music with their spring concerts on Saturday, May 17 3:00 p.m. and Sunday, May 18 3:00 p.m. at Damariscotta Baptist Church. The concert includes works by Benjamin Britten, Zoltán Kodály, Moses Hogan, and more. Linda Blanchard is St. Cecilia's artistic director, assisted by Sean Fleming on organ.

Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” was composed in 1943, and movingly sets the poem "Jubilate Agno," by the eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, whose outspoken views saw him wrongly imprisoned in a mental asylum. Britten captures the poem's eccentric yet deeply spiritual tone, portraying everything from animals to letters of the alphabet as symbols of worship and praise. The Times praised the work, saying that "the spirit of the curious, vivid poem has been caught," and calling it "a work not to be placed in any of the usual categories, but certainly beautiful."

Kodály's Missa Brevis was first composed in the early 1940s as an organ mass. During the siege of Budapest in the winter of 1944 and 1945, Kodály and his wife were forced to seek refuge in the cellars of the Budapest Opera House. It was in one of the Opera House cloakrooms that the premiere took place on 11 February 1945, performed by a choir made up of the Opera company’s soloists, who were accompanied by a harmonium, as well as by the distant sound of gunfire.

The concerts will close with Moses Hogan's tour de force "Elijah Rock." 

Tickets will be available soon for the May concerts!

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We look forward to hearing from you!