Concerts and Performances
2019 - 2020 Concerts and Performances
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The Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine
featuring the Choristers of The Madeleine Choir School
is pleased to present their
30th Annual Concert Season Schedule
including The Cathedral Family Series Concerts
In addition to our annual concert season offerings, we are very pleased to announce the Second Season of the Cathedral Family Series Concerts. This special series of concerts has been designed and integrated with the intent to introduce children and adolescents to the beauty of choral music and provide them with an opportunity to further explore their interest in this liturgical art form that has resonated in Catholic Churches and Cathedrals over the past 1500 years. These four events are FREE and open to the public. Passes are not required. We welcome you to join us!
Requirements for passes to all of our concerts and performances vary. To ensure you receive optimum seating we encourage you to review the options listed below, including the opportunity to make a tax-deductible donation that helps our organization continue to offer this annual concert series free of charge to our entire community.
The Cathedral Family Series Concert
Friday 25 October 2019 at 1000 AM
Händel! – An exploration of the Baroque era composer Georg Friedrich Händel for young children with a special visitor from the past!
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The St. Cecilia's Day Concert
Henry Purcell
Funeral Music of Queen Mary Z 860
Georg Friedrich Händel
Te Deum for the Victory at the Battle of Dettingen HWV 283
Zadok the Priest, HWV 258
Two British Monarchs are the origin for three works performed at this year’s St. Cecilia’s Day Concert. The foreign and not-so British monarch George II, with music by the equally foreign Georg Friedrich Händel, and Queen Mary II, wife of William of Orange, whose death in 1694 inspired the Westminster Abbey Master of Choristers Henry Purcell to set texts for her Interment. In 1743, George II led the British army in a battle at Dettingen, the last British Monarch to actually lead troops in combat. His victory over the French – well, actually just a clever escape – was cause for celebration and an opportunity to increase the affection of the citizenry for their German King. On Sunday November 27, 1743, the very festive Te Deum was performed for the first time in a morning service of worship at London’s St. James Palace Chapel, while Purcell’s sensitive musical setting of the texts of mourning were heard for the first time at the Funeral of Queen Mary on March 5, 1695.
Performed in the Cathedral of the Madeleine.
Passes are required.
Sunday 17 November 2019 800 PM
Brass and Organ Christmas Concert
The Brass Section of the Utah Symphony Orchestra will pair the wonderful sound of brass with the Cathedral’s Kenneth Jones organ for a spectacular holiday performance of original works, transcriptions and carols.
Sunday 15 December 2019 800 PM
No passes are required. Seating is first come, first served.
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The Christmas Carol Service
Music of Cristóbal de Morales, Anton Brucknerand Ēriks Ešenvalds
The Cathedral Choir offers this opportunity to participate in what has become an important holiday tradition in Salt Lake City for many people: the annual Christmas Carol Service at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. The Christmas Carol Service features music of the Advent and Christmas seasons, including plainchant, choral works and traditional carols, all in the inspiring setting of the Cathedral Church. Beginning each year with the solo child voice intoning the traditional Latin chant Rorate caelifrom the Prophet Isaiah–Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just one-the Carol Service is a thoughtful way to contemplate and celebrate the wonder of this season.
Performed in the Cathedral of the Madeleine.
Monday 16 December 2019 730 PM
Tuesday 17 December 2019 730 PM
PASSES ARE REQUIRED and 'SOLD OUT' FOR BOTH OF THESE PERFORMANCES ON DECEMBER 16 AND 17.
We encourage patrons to join our standby line on the night of each performance, as we have been able to accommodate most guests due to no-shows each year. You are also encouraged to join us for the December 24 performance at 4:00 PM, which is first come, first served seating. We highly recommend arriving early.
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Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols
Performed in the Cathedral of the Madeleine.
Thursday 19 December 2019 1215 PM No passes required.
Friday 20 December 2019 1215 PM No passes required.
Seating is first come, first served for the December 19 & 20 Ceremony of Carols.
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The Christmas Carol Service
Music of Cristóbal de Morales, Anton Bruckner and Ēriks Ešenvalds
The Cathedral Choir offers this opportunity to participate in what has become an important holiday tradition in Salt Lake City for many people: the annual Christmas Carol Service at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. The Christmas Carol Service features music of the Advent and Christmas seasons, including plainchant, choral works and traditional carols, all in the inspiring setting of the Cathedral Church. Beginning each year with the solo child voice intoning the traditional Latin chant Rorate caelifrom the Prophet Isaiah–Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just one-the Carol Service is a thoughtful way to contemplate and celebrate the wonder of this season.
Performed in the Cathedral of the Madeleine.
Tuesday 24 December 2019 400 PM
No passes required.
Seating is first come, first served for the 24 December Christmas Carol Service.
Performance Tour
Music of Peter Philips, Russell Woollen, and Leo Nestor
Dallas, Texas
24-27 January 2020
The Cathedral Choir will travel to Dallas, Texas, where they will perform in services and concerts at St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church.
The Cathedral Family Series Concert
Friday 21 February 2020 at 700 PM
A Jr. High and High School Choral Festival
High School choirs are invited to join the Cathedral Choir Scholars and the St. John Bosco Choristers in a concert performance with orchestra at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. To register your choir please call (801)323-9850.
No passes are required. Seating is first come, first served.
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The Founders' Day Concert
Stabat Mater is a thirteenth-century text attributed to Jacopone da Todi. Its title is an abbreviation of the first line, Stabat mater dolorosa:The sorrowful mother was standing beneath the Cross. The hymn, one of the most powerful and moving of the medieval sequences, meditates on the suffering of Mary, the mother of Christ, during his crucifixion and death. Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer whose early works were often criticized and censored by Soviet authorities. In 1976 he emerged from an eight-year period of self-imposed musical exile with a first composition in a new musical style that was to be dubbed tintinnabuli,highlighting the bell-like quality of his music. Pärt’s music is known to express pain, sadness, and soul-stirring beauty, making his setting of this text the apt rendering of a parent’s distress at the loss of a child. Johann Sebastian Bach’s very joyful Cantata No. 147 invites listeners to offer “heart and mouth and deed and living as witness to Christ.” The Cantata, slated for use on the Feast of the Visitation, was composed in 1723, the first year of Bach’s long tenure as the Thomaskantorin Leipzig.
Sunday 22 March 2020 800 PM
A link for the general public to request passes will be made available on this page Thursday, March 5, 2020.
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Good Friday Choral Meditation
Performed in the Cathedral of the Madeleine.
G. B. Da Pergolesi
Stabat mater
Every year on Good Friday the Choristers of the Cathedral Choir offer a performance of the Stabat Materby Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, as a choral meditation upon the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. The inspired and trenchant composition, set for two treble voices and strings, consists of twelve short works, half of which are sung by the entire choir while the remaining are performed as solos and duets. The Stabat Materwas composed by Pergolesi at the end of his short life at a Franciscan monastery in Pozzuoli and it was written as a replacement for the Scarlatti setting in use at the church of Maria dei Sette Dolori in Naples.
Friday 10 April 2020 300 PM
The Cathedral Family Series Concert
Friday 8 May 2020 at 700 PM
An Elementary School Choral Festival
Elementary School Choirs are invited to join the Choristers of the Madeleine Choir School in a concert performance at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. The festival will be led by The Madeleine Choir School Director of Music, Melanie Malinka. To register your choir please call (801)323-9850.
No passes are required. Seating is first come, first served.
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Madeleine Festival Concert
Ralph Vaughan Williams
The Lark Ascending
A Vision of Aeroplanes
Dona Nobis Pacem
Ralph Vaughan Williams possessed a great appreciation for poetry and lyrical texts, and set many of the great English poets throughout history including George Herbert, Alfred Tenneyson and William Shakespeare. Having been deeply distressed through his service in World War I, Vaughan Williams composed his Dona Nobis Pacem(Grant us peace) in 1936 as the winds of war were again brewing in Europe. He chose texts from the Roman Catholic Mass, biblical texts and, remarkably, the poetry of the nineteenth century US poet Walt Whitman. Whitman lived in Washington, DC during the horrors of the Civil War, and often volunteered in makeshift hospitals caring for the wounded and dying soldiers. In Whitman’s poetry, Vaughan Williams found the stirring voice for peace he desired in this cantata pleading for an end to war and its catastrophic impact on the lives of all. A Vision of Aeroplanes,a 1956 setting of the biblical text of the Prophet Ezekiel has been described as featuring “cataclysmic organ writing and whirling voice-part.”
Performed in the Cathedral of the Madeleine.
No passes required.
Sunday 17 May 2020 800 PM
The Madeleine Festival is an annual partner in our concert season. Donors of the Madeleine Festival of Arts should contact Trish Wesson pwesson@utcotm.org to request reserved seating for this concert on May 17, 2020. Donors of the Choir School at $500 and above since January 1, 2019 will be contacted by the Office of Advancement regarding Reserved Seating opportunities. Other seating for this performance is General Admission and no passes are required.
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Sung services at the Cathedral of the Madeleine during the school year
Sundays
- 10:00 AM Lauds
- 11:00 AM Mass
- 5:00 PM Vespers and Benediction
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
- 5:15 PM Mass
Holy Days
- 12:00 Noon Mass
- 4:30 PM Vespers
- 6:00 PM Mass