Choral church music is at its most effective when it’s embedded in the liturgy as it was designed to be, rather than performed on stage in a concert. The Mozart Requiem works well in both situations; but if you happen to be in a pew, mid-mass, eyes closed and head in the praying position at the moment when the choir breaks into the ‘Lacrimosa’, the music will somehow be doubly powerful.
Two annual summer festivals of music within the liturgy celebrate this truth. The first is the Roman Catholic St Birinus Festival, now in its fourth year. With Ryan Wigglesworth (composer and chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra) and his wife, the renowned soprano Sophie Bevan, at its musical heart, and powered, directed and enhanced by other members of the astonishingly musical Bevan family – Dominic (director), Francis (musicologist), Mary, Daisy and Tess – this will be a Thursday-to-Sunday feast of liturgical music. It will be held partly in Dorchester Abbey and partly (for the smaller divine offices) in the exquisite, tiny Catholic church of St Birinus – the church Wigglesworth and Bevan happened to spot while walking their dog in 2016, becoming deeply musically involved in it from that moment on. Wigglesworth directs mass there every Sunday, and will be doing so on the final morning of the festival.
