Music vital in bringing comfort

Wilberg says 'Called to Serve,' 'Requiem' show the famed choir's range

"A requiem is meant to bring comfort," says Mack Wilberg, newly named director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir whose "Requiem" was released earlier this year on a CD featuring not only the choir but also soloists Frederica von Stade and Bryn Terfel.

Music is also a powerful means of inspiration and motivation. That is clearly illustrated with another newly released Mormon Tabernacle Choir CD, "Called to Serve," which is designed to bring strength and comfort to those on missions as well as in other endeavors in life.

They are very different projects, Wilberg says, but he thinks they demonstrate not only the wide range of the choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square but also their ability to tackle the task at hand, whatever it is, and perhaps one that he shares with them. "I do think one of my strengths is the ability to adapt to whatever the situation is," he said.

The two CDs were both recorded with conductor Craig Jessop, who stepped down from that post in March. Wilberg has high praise and affection for the former conductor. "I'm so grateful to have been able to work with him. Craig has always been my greatest champion and interpreter."

In fact, it was at Jessop's behest that the "Requiem" was created. Jessop was conducting a concert as part of the Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival in 2006 featuring Ralph Vaughan William's "Dona nobis pacem." But the piece was not long enough to fill the entire program, so Wilberg was commissioned to write an Introit and an Epilogue to fill out the evening.

Wilberg chose as his text the traditional opening of the Requiem Mass: "Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine — Grant them eternal rest, O Lord."

Jessop suggested that the pieces could be the start of a full-fledged "Requiem," and Wilberg went to work. The finished piece was premiered in April 2007 as part of ceremonies marking the opening of the renovated Salt Lake Tabernacle.

The CD was released shortly before the death of LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, and for many people became a fitting association with that event.

Requiems, which were originally masses honoring the dead that date back to the second century, have taken on a broader scope and meaning, Wilberg says, not only under the hands of 17th- and 18th-century composers such as Mozart, Verdi and Brahms, but especially in the 20th century, with works by Herbert Howells, Benjamin Britten and John Rutter.

Wilberg's "Requiem" has some of the elements of traditional works, but it doesn't have the hell fire and damnation, the "Dies Irae," of some of those earlier works. "Mine is more in the tradition of Brahms and Faure," he says, "composers who preferred to offer comfort."

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