Ardingly Choral Society offer their spring concert

Spokesman Melvyn Walmsley said: “This exciting work has regained the significant standing it first enjoyed when premiered at King Louis XVI’s re-interment in the crypt of the Church of St Denis, Paris in 1817, a moment of great significance. Many leading European musicians attended, including Beethoven, Berlioz and Spohr, and the Mass was greatly admired by Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.

"Berlioz said the gentle conclusion ‘surpasses anything of the kind that has been written’ while Beethoven claimed that Cherubini was ‘the greatest living composer . . If I were to write a Requiem, this would be my only model.’ He requested it for his own funeral, a truly exceptional accolade.

“Interestingly the work has no soloists, perhaps because, composed soon after the First Republic, it retained a certain equality. The Archbishop of Paris banned it in 1834 for using women!

"What horrified some listeners was the use of a large tam-tam (gong) early in the Dies Irae. No doubt Cherubini drew on his great operatic expertise to inspire a little terror.

“Mozart’s Vespers K 339 (1780) is the other item in the concert, using a quartet of soloists from within the choir who interweave delicately with the main singers, with, as always, the Mid Sussex Sinfonia conducted by Robert Hammersley. Olivia Bell (soprano) returns as the principal soloist, especially in the wonderfully poignant Laudate Dominum. This is the best-known movement in Mozart’s last work for Salzburg Cathedral before he left his unsatisfying position there for the much wider musical circles in Vienna.”

Tickets are £13 online at www.ardinglychoralsociety.org.uk or £15 on the door.

The concert finishes by 9pm: remember that the clocks go forward that day.

The choir meets on Thursdays during school term times from 7.30-9pm in the Recital Room of the Music School at Ardingly College.