Directed by Paul Spicer
Accompanist: Mark Dancer
Price £0 to £20. Full-time students go free.
Book online as above or download, print, fill in and send back the form to us.
Provisional timetable for the day:
10 am Doors open
10.30 am-11.30 am Workshop session 1
11.30 am-11.50 am Refreshment break
11.50 am-1 pm Workshop session 2
1 pm-2 pm Lunch
2 pm-3.15 pm Workshop session 3
3.30 pm-4.30 pm Workshop session 4, including informal performance.
Verdi’s Requiem is one of the great masterpieces of the choral repertoire, and arguably the best-loved of all nineteenth-century choral works. With its mighty choruses, wonderfully expressive solos and vivid orchestration, it is an enthralling experience both for performers and audiences.
Written in 1873–4 as a memorial to the great Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni, it was designed for concert rather than liturgical performance. Verdi was agnostic in regards to religious doctrine, but fully alive to the human emotions of fear and hope, loss and consolation that fill the text of the Requiem Mass and in particular the medieval poetry of the ‘Dies Irae’, with its powerful evocation of the Last Judgment. Often described – and sometimes criticised – as ‘operatic’, the Requiem shares Verdi’s genius for creating a dramatic sense of immediacy, but it goes beyond his stage works in the scale and complexity of the choral writing and the compelling musical architecture of the work as a whole.
The workshop will be an opportunity to study a piece that will be sung in the 2026 Petersfield Musical Festival.
Paul Spicer is one of the leading choral conductors in the UK. He is a conducting teacher, composer, writer, lecturer and a specialist in 20th century British music. Paul has been Festival Conductor since 2005. He is best known as a choral conductor, partly through the many CDs he made with the Finzi Singers for Chandos Records and more recently with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Chori for Somm Records. Paul has been a regular guest conductor with the BBC Singers and is in great demand for his choral workshops, including the choral course he runs under his foundation, The English Choral Experience.
Petersfield Methodist Church is two minutes’ walk from the station, where there is a car park (entrance on Frenchman’s Road) with ample parking at the weekend. Please bring your own lunch – or visit one of the many nearby cafes. Tea and coffee will be provided, on arrival and during the morning break.
