Singing for the passion

In Milos Forman's film Amadeus, Mozart dictates what would become his final work, a requiem, to Antonio Salieri, the Viennese court composer who was poisonously jealous of him. This scene comes back vividly to me as I take notes while the Goethe Choir rehearses this infamous requiem for its Good Friday concert in St Patrick's Cathedral.

Thankfully the comparison ends there. I am here to report on the choir, not steal its secrets. And, although the Goethe Choir has been one of Dublin's premier choral societies since its inception 35 years ago, its excellence can be shared - and participation is invited from anyone eager to join. The members of the choir "are both amateurs and professionals in the best sense of the words", says John Dexter, conductor of the choir since September 1998. "An amateur is someone who loves music and does it for the love of it. Professional people have professional standards." And there's no doubt the members of this choir love music. From the rich fullness of their combined voices in the requiem, to the joy and animation they exude when talking about their work, this is a group of people who are passionate about their singing.

This kept them going through their bleakest period three years ago, when their former director and founder of the choir, Cait Cooper, suddenly became ill before their Christmas concert in 1997, and died in the following year. They considered the option of terminating the choir, but instead decided to continue.

"The decision was to carry on, carry forward what she taught us in terms of singing and the love and promotion of music," explains Michael Geaney, who has been a member for 30 years.

In 1965, the Goethe Institute had approached Cooper to conduct the new choir, which, in addition to promoting the works of German composers, also dedicated itself to multi-cultural exchange. Both the make-up of the choir and its repertoire reflect this ideal: its membership has included French, Scandinavian, Danish, Romanian and other foreign singers as well as Germans (most of the singers, however, are Irish). And it has sung works from all over Europe in a wealth of languages, including Irish, German, Russian, French, Spanish and Latin, to name but a few.

"We once sang in Galway in 13 different languages," Geaney says, before confiding: "I was the expert on Lithuanian that night."

The singers have been able to develop their linguistic expertise during various European tours, visiting Belgium, Germany and Italy. Choirs from Germany and Wales have also come to visit and perform with them. "Part of our pleasure is to share their songs, and they swap pieces with us as well," Geaney says. "That's why it's important for us to sing stuff in Irish - and to promote fresh, new Irish compositions.`

The choir has been keen to promote the works of new Irish composers. In the past, it has performed works by Frank Corcoran (now professor of composition in Hamburg), Bernard Geary and T.C. Kelly. Emerging Irish soloists have also found a warm welcome with the choir. "Cait was a schoolteacher," Geaney says. "So she was anxious that young singers got the opportunity to perform. She saw the choir as being able to provide that opportunity." One such singer, Alison Browner, was a student of Cooper's at the Loreto School in Crumlin. She has gone on to become a successful soloist in Germany.

Because it is not as large as many professional choirs, the Goethe has the luxury of choosing from a wide selection of music. "The size of the choir is critical," Geaney says. "For madrigals, it can go as low as four voices. It's best with eight to 10 voices, but it can comfortably go up to 25 to 30. "Approaching Easter, when we do a bigger work, we'll be at our bigger number of about 60, or 65, 70. But that summer season tends to be a lighter one. We might be as low as 30, 35, 40. So for the summer concert, when we're not dependent on the box office, we can do works that you otherwise wouldn't do. When we don't have to make a concert pay for itself, we can experiment."

As well as its traditional Christmas concerts in the National Concert Hall, which include a variety of unaccompanied and unusual carols, the choir has been performing the Good Friday concerts in St Patrick's Cathedral for the past several years. Sponsored by the Carmichael Centre, the proceeds from these concerts go to charity. Dexter, who is also chorus master of the Dublin County Choir, says these concerts have "an extraordinary following. They are always bursting to overflowing. It's a great privilege to sing in a concert with that kind of buzz".

In past years, the choir has performed the Stabat Mater by Rossini and Bach's St John Passion, as well as Handel's Messiah. When it did the latter piece on the day of the Good Friday Agreement, it "seemed like an anthem to the day", according to the choir's chairperson, Trisha Geaney. Mozart's Requiem, while not as commonly performed on Good Friday as the Bach Passions, is "an appropriate piece for a sombre occasion", says Dexter. It is one of Mozart's most famous works, but, ironically, "is not typical" of most of his music. Many legends surround the writing of this composition. Shortly after the Requiem was commissioned by a Count Franz Walsegg Stuppach as a memorial to his wife, Mozart fell ill. He died before he could complete it, and the final version was arranged by his student, Franz Sussmayr. "Under Mozart's direction, under his suggestion, the final parts of the Requiem were done," says Dexter. "Possibly he hummed it in his deathbed. There is a clear account of how they were singing around his deathbed with his friends. And of course his wife tried to push the story that Mozart had written all of it, with Sussmayr trying to persuade the world he wrote most of it. But nobody is quite sure who did what. The evidence is untrustworthy."

Mozart included strains of an older church music, Gregorian chants, in the Requiem, which was highly unusual for music of this period and, Dexter says, he "had them sung by a soprano soloist held high above the rest of the texture". Shortly afterwards, as if in confirmation, the combined voice of the soprano section sails over the top of the accompaniment like the airborne down from a dandelion.

The smaller size of the Goethe Choir also reflects the usual choir size of Mozart's time, and this makes "a difference in the clarity of what you hear", Dexter says. Sung in St Patrick's Cathedral, the Requiem will benefit from the "church atmosphere - the acoustics, echo, ambience that Mozart would have intended". In filling the dark vast space of St Patrick's with the passionate beauty and despair of the Requiem, the Goethe Choir's performance might come very close to what Mozart himself heard on his deathbed, as he strung the notes of his final composition together.

The Goethe Choir will perform Mozart's Requiem on Good Friday, April 13th in St Patrick's Cathedral at 8.30 p.m. For further information and tickets, tel: 01- 8735702.