by Kevin McLaughlin
The dead have inspired a great deal of beautiful music, but it is the living who find comfort in it.
At Trinity Cathedral on Friday, November 6, the Cleveland Chamber Choir presented two requiems separated by nearly four centuries: Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum (1605) and Eleanor Daley’s Requiem (1993). The concert was dedicated to the memory of Samuel Hubish, Jr., a friend and supporter of the choir who recently died in a car accident.
Under the title Lux Aeterna — “Eternal Light” — Gregory Ristow and the Cleveland Chamber Choir’s sixteen singers created a warm glow of sound that offered comfort and peace. Their intonation was remarkably true, and their blend seamless. Individual timbres merged into a single choral voice that rose heavenward — or at least into the vaulted ceiling of the Cathedral.