Brattleboro Concert Choir: Requiem for Animals

The Brattleboro Concert Choir presents the world premiere of a new work, “Requiem for Animals,” Saturday, May 17, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, May 18, at 4 p.m. at Persons Auditorium in Marlboro. Directed by Jonathan Harvey, this work for chorus and orchestra by Brattleboro resident Keane Southard uses the emotional power of music to lament the loss of animal life, to feel its magnitude, and to reconsider humankind’s role in this suffering and how it affects both the animals and ourselves. As Southard explains, “Many composers, like Mozart, Verdi, and Faure, have created beautiful requiems to commemorate the dead, but these have always been for human life. With the massive loss of animal life that happens every day on our planet, especially of wildlife and farmed animals, I thought it was certainly time that animals were memorialized in a requiem as well.” Southard’s music includes the words of J. Howard Moore, Upton Sinclair, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and the Roman Catholic Latin Requiem text. “This is an exciting opportunity for the Concert Choir to bring a vibrant and thought-provoking piece of music to the world for the very first time,” says Harvey. “There’s nothing like a world premiere, and we are lucky to have been able to commission this work through the Brattleboro Music Center.” “Requiem for Animals” speaks powerfully and compellingly to the world today. “There are moments of profound sadness, as the piece asks us to consider the sheer number of animals that the industrial meat industry kills, or the long list of species that have been lost to extinction, often as a result of human action or inaction,” Harvey explains. “Throughout the work, a sobering question repeatedly emerges: what is our responsibility to speak for the voiceless, to advocate for those who are considered less than, whether they are animal or human?“