What is classical music? · Unit 4: Kinds of work
Choral music
is written for a choir, often with soloists and an orchestra or organ, and much of it sets sacred words. The words decide the kind of work.
A sets the five fixed texts of the Catholic service, from the Kyrie to the Agnus Dei. A is the Mass for the dead, and in its older form it includes the , a poem about the Day of Judgement. Mozart’s Requiem was ordered anonymously in 1791; he died that December with it unfinished, and his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed it. Mozart’s draft of the Lacrimosa breaks off after eight bars, just as the choir reaches its first climax.
MozartRequiem in D minor, K. 626The Dies irae, the day of wrath, breaks out at full force. All four voices of the choir sing the words together in hammering chords over agitated strings, so every word comes through.
An is a sacred piece in English for the Anglican church; Handel wrote Zadok the Priest for the coronation of George II in 1727, and it has been sung at every British coronation since. An usually tells a story, often a sacred one, with soloists, choir and orchestra but without staging; Handel wrote his Messiah, on words from the Bible, in about twenty-four days in 1741.
Beethoven brought the choir into the symphony itself: the finale of his Ninth sets Schiller’s ode To Joy for four soloists, choir and orchestra.
BeethovenSymphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125At “Seid umschlungen, Millionen!”, be embraced, you millions, the tenors and basses sing a new, solemn tune in unison, doubled by trombone and low strings, and then the whole choir takes it up.
Choral composers often set plain chords, where every word comes through, against passages in which the voices enter one after another, as in a fugue, and the music gathers energy. The switch usually comes with a new line of text.