MANSFIELD, PA— Area singers are invited to join the Mansfield University Festival Chorus for the spring semester. The Chorus, 
directed by Peggy Dettwiler, will meet on Tuesday evenings at 7 p.m. in Steadman Theatre beginning January 20.
The Chorus will be preparing for two performances of Brahms’s German Requiem on Saturday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 12 at 2:30 p.m. in Steadman Theatre.
Mansfield Music Department alumni will be featured soloists for the concert. Annamaria Myers, 1981 graduate from Port Allegany, PA, will sing the soprano solo and Mark Rehnstrom, 1979 graduate from New York City, the baritone solos.
The performances will include full orchestra of MU faculty, students and area professional players.
Participation in the rehearsals and performances is open to all persons at the university and in the community. Singers only need to vocalize for placement in the soprano, alto, tenor, or bass sections.
Sectional rehearsals will take place on Thursdays from 5-5:50 p.m. Volunteer members are encouraged, but not required, to participate in sectional rehearsals.
Chorus participants will need purchase their music at the Mountie Den Campus Bookstore in Alumni Hall.
Brahms wrote his Requiem at a surprisingly early age. There is circumstantial evidence that the inception of the work may have been influenced by the death, in 1856, of his friend and mentor, the composer Robert Schumann. Even though the Requiem is a youthful work, it is the most monumental composition that Brahms left us.
Ein deutsches Requiem is profound for several reasons. It is deeply steeped in musical practices of the past, harkening back to Renaissance a Capella techniques and the great choral works of Bach and Handel and it ventures into solemn grandeur and monumentality on a par with Beethoven’s symphonies. It also has had an impact on the requiem compositions of Fauré, Duruflé, and Rutter.
Brahms departed from the traditional Latin text of the Catholic liturgy, selecting texts from the Lutheran Bible in the German language instead (both from the Old and New Testament as well as from the Apocrypha). He arranged his texts in such a way as to project a development from mourning to affirmation of faith in an eternal life, thereby making concrete his message of comfort and consolation to the bereaved.
Call (570)662-4721 or e-mail pdettwil@mansfield.edu for more information on the Festival Chorus.