Mass of the Children - John Rutter

Featuring: The Campbellton Youth Chorus, Sarah Szopinski, Director

The idea of combining a children’s choir with an adult one is of course nothing new, but most of these works tend to treat the young voices as a subsidiary musical resource. In his Mass of the Children, however, the composer has given the children’s choir a central part to play. It is they, not the adults, who are heard at the very outset, and their role throughout is integral to the overall concept of the Mass. As always with Rutter, the music is beautifully written for the voices and superbly orchestrated. His skilful writing for soloists, choirs and orchestra and his sensitive interweaving of the various Latin and English texts has resulted in one of his finest and most moving works.