If You Go
• What: Chattanooga Bach Choir presents "Music for Royals."• When: 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 18.• Where: First Cumberland Presby-terian Church, 1505 North Moore Road.• Admission: $15 donation, students with valid IDs admitted without donation.• Website: www.chattanoogabachchoir.org
Music from the coronation of King James II to the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton will be featured Sunday afternoon when the Chattanooga Bach Choir presents "Music for Royals."
David Long will conduct the singers in an "aural scrapbook of music from royal weddings and coronations, including compositions by Purcell, Parry, Mathias, McKee, Duruflé, Mealor and Handel," said Dabney Carden, choir administrator.
Among the selections will be the text of Psalm 122, which Henry Purcell set to music in 1685 for the coronation of King James II at Westminster Abbey.
"More than 300 years later, Charles Hubert Hastings Parry reset the same text, adding a patriotic interlude of 'Vivat Regina/Vivat Rex Vivat' -- long live the queen/king -- which was performed at the coronations of King George V in 1911 and Queen Elizabeth II in 1953," said Carden. "It was also sung at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 and of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011."
Two settings of "Ubi Caritas et Amor Deus Ibi Est" (Where Charity and Love Dwell, God Is Present) are on the program. The best-known, written by Maurice Duruflé, was sung at the wedding of Prince Edward (Queen Elizabeth's youngest child) and Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999. The second setting, commissioned for the marriage ceremony of William and Kate, uses the same text but is more complex harmonically, said Carden.
The concert will conclude with the majestic "Zadok the Priest" and "Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened," two of Handel's coronation anthems. Carden noted that the words to "Zadok the Priest" have been part of every British coronation since AD 973, when King Edgar took the throne. Handel's version has been sung at every coronation since 1727.
Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.