South London Singers

The S.L.S. would like to invite you to a concert of lovely music to enjoy on a Sunday afternoon.

We have chosen three well-loved choral items to start our 2026-7 season. Fauré’s Requiem is full of beautiful melodies. It is his very personal take on the Requiem and includes some parts of the burial service with which he was very familiar as a church organist. In fact, he seems to have had his fill of playing for these services and, apparently said: ‘I know it all by heart and I wanted to write something different’. He revised and added to the piece several times before his final version in 1900. He did not write the piece for any particular memorial although he lost both his parents in the few years before the first version was aired in 1888. He is quoted as saying that he did not write it ‘for anything just his own pleasure’ and that it had been called ‘a lullaby of death’.

We will also be singing Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs, his 1911 setting of words of a spiritual nature by the seventeenth century Welsh poet, George Herbert. This is ,again, a tuneful piece which prominently features a baritone soloist along with varied contributions by the choir and organ.

The third of our choral items dates from 1845 and its first performance which was given in London: Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Hear My Prayer’ based on Psalm 55. It is written for soprano soloist, choir and organ and, again, is full of melody.