Bates Choir to sing Schubert, Haydn

The Bates College Choir sings music by Schubert and Haydn in 8 p.m. concerts Friday and Saturday, Dec. 5 and 6, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. The concerts are open to the public at no charge.

Directed by John Corrie and accompanied by musicians from the college and community, the 72-voice choir sings Franz Schubert’s Tov Lehodos and Franz Josef Haydn’s Te Deum and Lord Nelson Mass. Five choir members will sing solos.

Tov Lehodos is the only Hebrew text Schubert ever set to music. He completed this setting of a Jewish liturgical text in 1828, commissioned by the cantor of a Vienna synagogue.

The English naval hero Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson links the two Haydn pieces. Although Haydn’s setting of the Te Deum, a liturgical hymn of praise to God, was composed for the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, it was first performed during Nelson’s September 1800 visit to the court of Hungary’s noble Esterhazy family, for whom Haydn worked.

Originally titled Missa in angustiis (“Mass in the time of need”), the D-minor Mass now known as Lord Nelson was composed during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, in 1798. Nelson’s victory over the French in the Battle of the Nile is thought to have inspired Haydn as he composed the Mass, and the work was performed for Nelson during that same visit in 1800.

For more information about the concert, please call 207-786-6135.