Barts Choir

An unfinished Requiem by a composer who died young, and a Mass by one enjoying a fruitful maturity – linked by friendship and the consolation, joy and hope that music can bring from personal or national troubles.

For all the speculation about the composition of Mozart’s Requiem, it remains one of his defining works into which he poured his most intense inspiration. (It was also one of the first choral works performed by Barts Choir, 60 years young in 2025.)

Haydn’s ‘Mass in Troubled Times’, and the name of the naval hero now attached to it, reminds us of the Napoleonic wars then raging in Europe.

From the ominous trumpet calls of the opening Kyrie and in the Benedictus, the music turns to joy and hope, with the concluding Dona nobis pacem (“grant us peace”) surely referring not just to the individual soul but to the wider world.