the rix mix

Listened to Heinrich Schutz's St. Matthew Passion,a rather austere 17th Century Lutheran work with a lot of solo plainchant. Then Faure's incomparable Requiem (1893), which I had the great pleasure of performing twice with a church choir around Easter back in 1967, when I possessed a teenager's servicable baritone voice. Sections of this Requiem are often included on compilations of easy listening classical religious music ("Music of Inner Harmony" "Mad About Angels"). No purgatorial sufferings or triumphal fireworks here. Resurrection is espressed as a quiet & peaceful transition, like a sunrise on a hazy Summer morning. Wrapped up the Easter music with "Wondrous Love" from William Duckworth's reworkings of the Southern Harmony songbook. "I'm Gonna Run To the City of Refuge" by Blind Willie Johnson. An Alan Hovhaness setting of a colonial hymn text "O, For a Shout of Sacred Joy."