The Johnson City Symphony Orchestra will present “Spirt and Soul” Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Seeger Chapel, Milligan College.
The concert will feature guest artists Esther Park, piano; Karen Smith, alto; the ETSU Bucsworth Men’s Choir; Men from the Milligan Concert Choir; the Appalachian Men’s Ensemble; and Men from King College Choir.
Robert J. Seebacher is conductor of the JC Symphony Orchestra.
Among the program selections are “Requiem in D Minor” by Luigi Cherubini and “Love Was My Lord and King!”
Luigi Cherubini’s compositional style changed almost every time his personal situation did. In Italy, he cut his musical teeth on religious music before moving on to opera, which took him to London, and then to Paris.
Cherubini’s first Requiem was for choir and orchestra, with no soloists. When the Archbishop of Paris rejected the work because it included women’s voices, he did the only logical thing: he wrote one for male chorus and orchestra.
The Requiem was performed at his funeral in 1842.
The second work, the requiem “Love Was My Lord and King,” was commissioned by the Orpheus Male Chorus of Phoenix and is based on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam A.H.H.” written on the death of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. It took 17 years for Tennyson to complete it and it became the model for proper “mourning” in Victorian times.