Soloists for the performance are Berry students Joyce Corley, a junior from Decatur; Cheryl Darling, a junior from Marietta; senior Michael Hendrick from LaGrange; and Myers McAllister, a junior from Tifton.
The Berry College Concert Choir and Chamber Orchestra will present Mozart’s “Requiem in D Minor” on Sunday.
The performance will be at 3 p.m. in the College Chapel, U.S. 27 north of Rome. Harry Musselwhite, assistant professor of music, will conduct the concert, which is free and open to the public.
The Berry Concert Choir is composed entirely of Berry students. The orchestra will feature Berry faculty and students, members of the Rome Symphony and other string players from the Atlanta area.
Soloists for the performance are Berry students Joyce Corley, a junior from Decatur; Cheryl Darling, a junior from Marietta; senior Michael Hendrick from LaGrange; and Myers McAllister, a junior from Tifton.
Ironic circumstances surround the composition of “Requiem in D Minor,” according to Kay Abbott, news editor at Berry.
A mysterious stranger commissioined Mozart to compose a funeral mass, or requiem, through an unsigned letter brought by a messenger in August 1791.
Although Mozart never learned the man’s identity, his employer was Count Franz Walsegg zu Stuppach, who regularly commissioned musical works anonymously and would later declare them to be his own.
Mozart’s inital work on the project was interrupted by a commission for the coronation of the Emperor Leopold in Prague.
Plagued by failing health due to typhus, Mozart soon realized that the requiem he was writing would be his own. Although he tried desperately to complete the work, he was unsuccessful. Mozart died on Dec. 5, 1791, at the age of 36, after completing the “Introit”, “Requiem Aeternam,” the “Kyrie” and part of the “Dies irae.”
It is reported that his dying breath was an attempt to express to Franz Sussmayr, his student and assistant who later completed the work, the scoring of the drum passages for the “Requiem,” Mrs. Abbott said.
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