St. Cecilia Chamber Choir performs Britten, Kodály, and Hogan on May 17 and 18

St. Cecilia Chamber Choir celebrates 30 years of fine choral music with its “Hope Conquers Fear” concerts on Saturday, May 17 and Sunday, May 18, both at 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. According to some accounts, 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.”

Pre-concert talks will be given before each concert at 2:30. Choir members will talk about special aspects of “Rejoice in the Lamb” and the Kodály mass, with featured presenter and Choir member John Ward. Ward has been professor and chair of the Kenyon College English department and has served as Dean of Centre College.

Tickets are $20, with free admission for students and children. Tickets are available online at ceciliachoir.org, at Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop in Damariscotta, and at the door. For more information, please email info@ceciliachoir.org, or visit facebook.com/stceciliachamberchoir and ceciliachoir.org.