The South Somerset Choral Society under the baton of Musical Director John Jenkins since 2023, is proud to present works by two composers active a century apart which contrast the Classical and Baroque styles.

Franz Schubert has been variously described as the last of the Classical tradition, and as a pioneer of the Romantic. In his short life (he died in 1828 at the age of 31) he produced a prodigious number of works covering a wide range of genres, of which his Mass in G Major was written in 5 days in early 1815 and performed at his local parish church in Lichtental in the same year. Written with textual omissions in the style of a missa brevis the piece makes modest use of soloists and ends, not on an energetic finale, but rather on a warmer, more tender note, with the Agnus Dei. Its melancholy and mournful melodies are enriched with profound harmonies, which underscore the young composer’s maturity – a maturity which had been recognised and developed by Antonio Salieri, whose pupil he was at that time.

The career of Georg Frideric Handel illustrates the style of the Baroque period, and his “Acis and Galatea”, which received its first performance in 1718, has been one of the most successful secular music dramas in the English language. Handel set his librettists the challenge to create an engaging depiction of untrammelled nature and naïve love, tinged by tragedy. In response John Gay, the librettist of the wildly successful The Beggar’s Opera, drew on John Dryden’s translation of “The Story of Acis, Polyphemus and Galatea” from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the result is a magical and happy (notwithstanding a murder!) cavalcade of lovely songs and stirring choruses, hugely popular in the time of Handel and still popular today.

Tickets cost £18 (Under 16s £10) and are available from TicketSource, the SSCS website, Health & Remedy (2 Holyrood Street, Chard) or cash/card on the door.