# The Great Choruses



## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

One of the most uplifting forms of classical music for me are some of the great choruses. It doesn't matter where they come from. Some of them from operas or masses could be standalone works.

I have many favorites, but the following two are at the top, both by Mozart. The first from La Clemenza di Tito does not appear to be all that well known. If one does a search for choruses in that opera, others will come up first. But it is nothing short of magnificent!






The other is from Die Zauberflote: Chor der Priester (aka O, Isis und Osiris chor):


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

The first video is "unavailable", so I don't know which chorus in La clemenza di Tito you're talking about.
I suspect it's either the "deh, conversate, oh dei" or "ah, grazie si rendano"



hammeredklavier said:


> the "et incarnatus est" from Mozart's spatzenmesse K.220
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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

This is one of my favourites, both as a piece and as a performance:






Handel's Solomon, "From the Censer curling rise".


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)




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## FastkeinBrahms (Jan 9, 2021)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> This is one of my favourites, both as a piece and as a performance:
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That is one of my absolute favourites. I got the same recording in the big Decca Händel box. Exhilarating.


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## mparta (Sep 29, 2020)

I don't know how to make youtube things paste on here.

But I was looking for May No Rash Intruder, also from Solomon-- The Nightingale Chorus. Oh my.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

mparta said:


> I don't know how to make youtube things paste on here.
> 
> But I was looking for May No Rash Intruder, also from Solomon-- The Nightingale Chorus. Oh my.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> This is one of my favourites, both as a piece and as a performance:
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At 1:02, it sounds like the opening of the gloria from J. Haydn's schöpfungsmesse


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

None better than Bach.















I haven't even gotten started.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)




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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> None better than Bach.
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LOL.. True.. True.. But also, do look at these "grim, powerful calls from a world beyond ours":

Michael Haydn Requiem in C minor (1771)

















"Bartok used examples from the Requiem in his teaching; Szymanowski wrote of its 'divine grief', the most powerful 'eruption' of the 'grim, powerful call from a world beyond ours' in Mozart's late music" 
< Mozart's Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion / Simon P. Keefe / P. 6 >

"Michael's influence on Romanticism is also reflected in the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, who praised Michael's sacred music above that of older brother Joseph's. Franz Schubert is known to have visited the grave of Michael Haydn in order to gain inspiration for writing sacred music."

J.A. Hasse: Requiem in E-flat major (1764) - Dies irae




 (10:50 ~ 15:24)

"What then is "Romantic"? How far back should its beginnings, in music, be pushed? To 1793, when a review of a new work by "Citizen Méhul" described him as a Romantic? Or further - to year 1780-81, the year of Mozart's Idomeneo, a work whose use of orchestral colour for structural and psychological purposes anticipates nineteenth-century Romantic opera?" <Berlioz: The Making of an Artist 1803-1832 , By David Cairns , P. 193>
[ 1:23:30 ~ 1:28:30 ]
[ 2:01:00 ~ 2:06:00 ]


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

1:10:05




(strikes me as one of the most memorable moments in the opera)


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## mparta (Sep 29, 2020)

Haydn70 said:


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yes, and that's the performance i prefer


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> LOL.. True.. True.. But also, do look at these "grim, powerful calls from a world beyond ours":


Yeah, Handel, the Haydns and Mozart aren't half bad either. And neither is...Bruckner...


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The "Slava" processional from the Coronation Scene in Boris Godunov.


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## mparta (Sep 29, 2020)

Haydn70 said:


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What an ear worm!! I will have this in my head all night.:clap:


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

mparta said:


> I don't know how to make youtube things paste on here.


There's this video on YouTube called 'How to post a video to a forum' that maybe you want to check out. I would just post the video here for you, but I myself didn't watch the video, so I don't know how to. I'm still working to finish this book _How To Read a Book _by Adler and van Doren, so when I get around to it I'll help you out on the video situation.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

hammeredklavier said:


> The first video is "unavailable", so I don't know which chorus in La clemenza di Tito you're talking about.
> I suspect it's either the "deh, conversate, oh dei" or "ah, grazie si rendano"


Sorry that video didn't work. It works on my end, but maybe it's a regional issue. Anyway the La Clemenza di Tito chorus is 'Che del Ciel, Che Degli Dei'. Here's another recording:


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## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

There are many, many opera choruses I like, and there are so many others. But one of my favorites that seems somewhat lesser-known is the hallelujah chorus from Schmidt's _Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln_. Actually, I maybe like it better than Handel's.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Israel in Egypt has several fine choruses, none more so than the "hailstones" chorus:






It doesn't say, but I think that's from the Gardiner recording.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

It's not a million angels singing, or anything else that will blow apart the speakers and bother the neighbors but I like _Frostiana_ by Randall Thompson which seems to perfectly frame the poems of Robert Frost's visions of pastoral New England.I read somewhere that when Robert Frost sat in on the premier he got up and clapped wildly immediately after the performance. And I was one of the only people on the other thread concerning which time period of vocal music do you enjoy best to express a liking for the 20th century.









Also included on this CD are some very well-measured and beautiful religious chorus; the two _Alleluia_'s and the _Peaceable Kingdom_.

Here are some others I really like; which are also so beautiful:

















I have many beautiful recordings of Rachmaninoff's soulful _Vespers/All-Night Vigil_, bit the above recordings to me are the finest because they are underlined by those big Baltic bass voices, and those on a budget needn't buy both.









The church music of Orlando Gibbons is also quite beautiful, down to earth and solemn. Not much is known about Orlando Gibbons. He lived during a time of plague, and may have succumbed to it himself as he die young in his 40s. You can see how his church music is a candle shining in the darkness.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)




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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> Israel in Egypt has several fine choruses, none more so than the "hailstones" chorus


It is also commonly believed the qui tollis of Mozart's mass K.427 is influenced by this:





Although I think the "base" of the Mozart mass is still "Salzburgian":


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The concluding part of Liszt's _Dante_ symphony:


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

This one's a humdinger, and great fun to sing. The "Amen, in sempiterna" closing chorus of Rossini's _Stabat Mater_:






It's a bit long compared to some of the choruses posted so far, but you get your money's worth


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