Rossini: Petite Messe Solenelle

Royal Free Singers Spring Concert 

Saturday April 4th, 2020

Concert cancelled. Please apply for refunds from your ticket provider

Born in 1792, Rossini had composed 36 operas and earned a fortune by the age of 37.  He then wrote almost nothing until, at the age of 55, he finally settled in Paris, where he produced a number of, mostly small, pieces that he famously described as his ‘sins of old age’.  Among these, though, was the Petite Messe Solennelle of 1863, a piece that is neither unduly solemn nor, other than in an affectionate sense, little.  As Rossini himself noted in the dedication on the score, “Good God, behold completed this poor little Mass … Thou knowest well, I was born for comic opera.  A little science, a little heart, that is all.”
Originally scored for two pianos and harmonium, Rossini re-scored it four years later for full orchestra.  However, it is the original version, which the Royal Free Singers will be performing, that has become  a key item in the choral repertoire, popular with choirs and audience alike. 

Autumn Concert 2019

With four professional soloists, we are delighted to be performing Handel’s setting of a libretto based on John Dryden’s ode, Alexander’s Feast or The Power of Love.

Composed in 1736 and premiered at Covent Garden Theatre, London, this magnificent piece describes a banquet held by Alexander the Great in the captured Persian city of Persepolis.  Encouraged by his mistress, Thais, and the singing of the Greek army’s resident musician, Timotheus, an increasingly intoxicated Alexander and his guests set about burning down the city in order to avenge the Greek soldiers killed in battle with the Persians.

The success of this work encouraged Handel to make the transition from writing Italian opera to English choral works.

Royal Free Singers: Magnificat - an evening of music by Bach

Bach Magnificat and Advent Cantatas

Saturday, 1st December  7.30

Windsor Parish Church

The Royal Free Singers, under the direction of their conductor, Ben Gunner, and accompanied on the organ by Luke Bond, Assistant Director of Music of Saint George's Chapel, Windsor castle, are performing three Bach masterpieces associated with the Advent and Christmas season: the cantatas Nun komm der heiden Heiland (Come now, Saviour of the heathens) BWV61 (1714) and Wachetauf ruf uns die Stimme (Sleepers Awake) BWV140 (1731), and the joyous Magnificat BWV243, first performed on Christmas Day in Leipzig in 1733. Luke Bond will also be playing organ works.


Ticket prices:
£15
£1 for under 12s,
£5 for 12-16 year-olds
Special block booking rates for 10+ tickets, if booked in advance.

For tickets:- 
click here to buy tickets

Phone: 07434 626045
Email: linchanan@aol.com 
Call in: The Royal Windsor Information Centre, Royal Windsor Station, Windsor

Royal Free Singers 45th Anniversary Summer Prom

Royal Free Singers with Enfield Citadel Band

Saturday 23rd June: 7.30pm

Windsor Parish Church 

From its origins in 1973, when Ben Gunner, then a geography teacher at the former Royal Free Boys School, formed a small choir of staff and parents, the Royal Free Singers has grown to become a 100-plus community choir, serving the wider Windsor area and dedicated to performing the best of choral music, both the familiar and the less well known.
The choir is very pleased to be joined on this anniversary occasion by the celebrated Enfield Citadel Band of the Salvation Army, who will be performing works from their brass band repertoire as well as accompanying the choir in the late Ray Steadman-Allen’s up-tempo Salvationist ‘Age of Rockets’ and in popular prom favourites for audience participation such as Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory.  The concert will also include well-loved opera choruses like Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances and the Easter Hymn from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, and Fauré’s gentle Cantique de Jean Racine. 


Ticket prices:
£15
£1 for under 12s,
£5 for 12-16 year-olds
Special block booking rates for 10+ tickets, if booked in advance.

For tickets:- 
click here to buy tickets

Phone: 07434 626045
Email: linchanan@aol.com 
Call in: The Royal Windsor Information Centre, Royal Windsor Station, Windsor

Spring Concert 2018 - Durufle and Peeters

 

Durufle - Requiem

Flor Peeters - Missa Festiva

Windsor Parish Church:  Saturday, 24 March 2018, 7.30 pm

Flor Peeters (1903-1986) was a professor at the celebrated Lemmens Institute music school in Leuven, and for the greater part of his life was organist at Belgium’s metropolitan cathedral, St. Rombout’s in Mechelen (pictured). Other posts held included organ and composition professorships at Tilburg and Antwerp Conservatories. Renaissance music, particularly the school of Flemish polyphony, was a significant influence on his own compositions, including the Missa Festiva, composed in 1947, perhaps the best known of his nine Masses.
 
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) composed his 1947 Requiem, opus 9, in memory of his father. Like Fauré he omits the Dies Irae and employs a mezzo-soprano and baritone soloist for, respectively, the Pie Jesu and sections of the Offertorium and Libera me. The music while based on themes from the Gregorian plainchant Mass for the Dead, has a distinctly contemporary, but individual character. Many consider it to be one of the most beautiful pieces of 20th century religious music.

Ticket prices:
£15
£1 for under 12s,
£5 for 12-16 year-olds
Special block booking rates for 10+ tickets, if booked in advance.

For tickets:- 
click here to buy tickets

Phone: 07434 626045
Email: linchanan@aol.com 
Call in: The Royal Windsor Information Centre, Royal Windsor Station, Windsor

Song of Mary Workshop

An Afternoon with Jonathan Willcocks...

Sunday October 8th, 2017
Windsor Boys School, 2-5pm

The Royal Free Singers are delighted to let you know about an exciting event this Autumn. We have commissioned a new work from Jonathan Willcocks, our patron, which we will perform at our concert on 2 December.

To help us prepare for this, we have arranged an Afternoon Workshop on Sunday 8 October which will be led by Jonathan himself - and we are inviting others to join us! This will be a unique opportunity to work with a living composer on a completely new piece of choral music. As well as working through the score, Jonathan will also talk about the meaning behind the work and about the musical styles he uses to convey that meaning.

The piece, called "The Song of Mary", uses a variety of texts from different times and sources. It is scored for soprano solo, SATB choir and orchestra. As it has been written with our choir in mind, it will be very suitable and interesting for many other community choirs and choral societies in the future, after its premiere on 2 December.

Be in at the beginning!!

Date: Sunday 8 October 2017
Time: 2 - 5 pm (registration from 1.30)
Venue: Windsor Boys’ School, Maidenhead Road, Windsor SL4 5EH
Main entrance is in Vansittart Road, opposite Oxford Road
Parking available at the School
Cost: £10 Tea & cake provided!!

To book a place, please email the following details to: rfs.comeandsing@gmail.com

Name:

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Total Cost:

RFS Member? Yes / No (if No, where did you hear of the event?)



Please send your cheque payable to “Royal Free Singers” to Helen Archibald, Secretary, Royal Free Singers, 37 Green Lane, Windsor, Berks, SL4 3RZ.

Willcocks, Beethoven and Mozart

Winter Concert 2017

Windsor Parish Church

Saturday 2 December, 2017

The Royal Free Singers have commissioned a new work with orchestral accompaniment from their patron, the composer Jonathan Willcocks, which will be premiered at this concert. Titled The Song of Mary, it incorporates a variety of Marian texts from different times and sources, including a new setting of the Magnificat.

Each year Prince Nikolaus Esterházy used to commission a new Mass to celebrate his wife’s name day, a function performed for many years by Joseph Haydn until his retirement on ill-health grounds in 1802.

Beethoven's Mass in C was commissioned in an attempt to continue this tradition. Completed in 1807, it includes some of the ideas he was to use nearly two decades later in his 9th Symphony, the Choral.

The concert includes Mozart's Symphony No 35 in D Majoy, K385, composed in 1782 to a commission from the prominent Salzburg Haffner family.

Ticket prices:
£15
£1 for under 12s,
£5 for 12-16 year-olds
Special block booking rates for 10+ tickets, if booked in advance.

For tickets:-

Click here for link to online booking
Phone: 07434 626045
Email: linchanan@aol.com 
Call in: The Royal Windsor Information Centre, Royal Windsor Station, Windsor