High school choruses tackle Mozart's 'Requiem'

Plymouth Philharmonic director Steven Karidoyanes works with the Scituate High School chorus in preparation for a late-winter concert in 2004. The school's singers will participate in the concert Saturday in Plymouth. (Tom Herde/Globe Staff/file)

More than 80 pages of classical choral music. Many notes. Death, judgment, and - hopefully - mercy. Every word sung in an ancient language. Who wouldn't jump at the opportunity?

More than 250 high school singers from seven area schools will join the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra for its performance next month of Mozart's "Requiem, one of the most powerful and widely recognized of the composer's works.

The "Requiem" - a big work that calls for a big sound - is part of the "Classical Giants" concert that also includes orchestral works by Haydn and Beethoven - the two other masters of the Viennese connection that brought the Classical style to its apex and laid the groundwork for the Romantic movement.

The concert is scheduled for 8 p.m. Saturday in Memorial Hall at 83 Court St. (Route 3A) in Plymouth.

Select high school choral groups are taking part, including Duxbury High School, Marshfield High, the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Pembroke High, the Plymouth high schools, Scituate High, and Silver Lake Regional High, which draws students from Halifax, Kingston, and Plympton.

Learning to sing the "Requiem" is a challenge sought by the regional high school chorus teachers, who regard collaborating with a professional orchestra on a public performance as a significant part of their music education program.

"The teachers said this is part of our curriculum," said Steven Karidoyanes, music director for the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra. And it was the music teachers who chose Mozart's "Requiem" as this year's project.

Two years ago, the student choruses sang some opera and sacred music by Mozart at a philharmonic concert, and the experience caused their directors to go a quantum step further this year in tackling a long, deep, and demanding work.

"They heard what the kids sounded like in that sound world," Karidoyanes said, "and wanted to hear more. . . . I said, 'Good choice.' "

The "Requiem" (from the Latin word for "rest") is rooted in the Mass for the Dead of the Roman Catholic Church. Following a fixed liturgical sequence, it includes a prayer for eternal rest, a plea for freedom from eternal punishment for sin, and an evocation of divine judgment - "the day of wrath," the Latin text states, when the world will dissolve in ashes.

These are big issues for human inner life, and Mozart's music is marked by thunderous passages, a dark tonality, and powerful expressions of emotion. Although the drama of facing eternity appealed to composers before Mozart, his "Requiem" matched instrumental settings to the vocals in a way that took the form into another musical dimension.

"It's huge," said Karidoyanes, who rehearses the combined 250 voices and takes part in a separate rehearsal by each of the seven school groups. "It's asking the most of them."

The student singers have warmed to the music and made it their own, said members of the Silver Lake Regional High School's Select Choir, a small group of student singers chosen by audition. Silver Lake sophomore Melanie Lund said the prospect of learning a classical piece of music that ran for 80 pages with lyrics in a foreign language was intimidating. While her ensemble has sung both classical works and songs in other languages before, usually those pieces are two pages - not 80.

"When we finally heard it and how it fit together, how the Latin makes the piece, it definitely changed my outlook," Lund said. "You couldn't get across the scarier and angrier parts without the Latin."

"It's definitely challenging," said Ali Harvey, a junior from Plympton, "and it's great when it all comes together."

The students have taken to the "sound world" of Mozart because of the work's visceral nature, Karidoyanes said. "So much is based in the rhythm. The kids latch on to it. One told me, 'We play that [rhythm] with our rock band.'

"If people sit there and listen, they will be moved," Karidoyanes predicted of the concert performance of the "Requiem" - by more than 300 performers, including the orchestra and four vocal soloists from Opera-by-the-Bay. "You will be changed and changed for the better."

The concert's full program suggests music's "hand-over" from Mozart and Haydn to Beethoven, Karidoyanes said. Since the "Requiem" is a "dark sound world" - scored for clarinets, bassoons, and trombones (no flutes, oboes, or horns) - it is complemented here by Haydn's "London Symphony," which illustrates the full range of the symphony's tonic world, he said.

Mozart was influenced by Haydn's development of symphonic form; Haydn's later work was in turn influenced by Mozart's innovations in the form. Steeped in the Classical tradition, Beethoven "grabbed it and kept running," Karidoyanes said.

The concert also will feature Beethoven's "Coriolan Overture," a single movement presenting a dramatic musical portrait of the tragically conflicted Roman warrior, Coriolanus. Advance tickets for the performance may be purchased from the orchestra's office by calling 508-746-8008.

Robert Knox can be contacted at rc.knox@gmail.com.