When the music stopped, nobody wanted to break the silence
The Cathedral Choir sang Duruflé's Requiem in full, and Director of Music Peter Siepmann says the choir has never sounded better.
The last notes of Duruflé's Requiem faded into the arches of Nottingham Cathedral, and for a long moment nobody moved.
Peter Siepmann, the Cathedral's Director of Music, knows that silence well. He thinks this was his seventh time conducting the piece. "But it never gets old. You find something new about it every time you do it."
Maurice Duruflé finished his Requiem in 1947. He built it on the Church's ancient Gregorian melodies and, as Peter puts it, "clothes them in this extraordinary 20th century French style of harmony. So it's a unique piece. It's unlike anything else."
Peter calls the organ part "a fearsomely difficult accompaniment, like one of the most difficult accompaniments there is." When Timothy Selman joined the Cathedral as Organist and Assistant Director of Music, one of the first things he asked was whether they could perform it. On Friday he had a page turner, and Peter Shepherd, Director of Music at Chesterfield Parish Church, beside him to help pull stops and press buttons.
The choir began learning the Requiem to sing parts of it at the 11.15am Solemn Requiem Mass on Remembrance Sunday. But at 45 minutes, the whole piece is too long for Mass. So Peter thought: why not sing all of it, as a concert on the Friday evening before? He hopes to make that a pattern each November.
If you couldn't make it on Friday, come along on Sunday 8 November at 11.15am. You'll be very welcome. The choir will sing three movements: Requiem aeternam (Eternal rest), Lux aeterna (Eternal light) and In paradisum (Into paradise).
A choir on a journey
The Cathedral Choir brings together choral scholars from Nottingham's two universities, lay clerks, and volunteers who do it "simply for the love of it". They rehearse at 7.15pm on Wednesdays, often after a full day's work.
Peter has led the choir for a year, and he talks about it as something alive. "A choir's like a living thing. It evolves and it develops." For much of that year he chose to keep things simple and do them really well. Friday was the chance to show what that patience has built. "I'm so proud of them. And the sound that they make is so beautiful."
He sees the concert as a waypoint, not a destination. "This is who we are now, this is where we are." Asked for one word to sum up the evening, he chose "special". "Because it's a special piece of music. Because it's a special place. Because they're special people, and because the journey that we've been on has been special."
At the heart of it all, he says, is Sunday Mass. He borrows a phrase from Stephen Cleobury, the late Director of Music at King's College, Cambridge, to describe what the choir is for: "It's our job to thin the veil between earth and heaven."
Where to hear them next
If you've never been to anything like this, the Carol Service is the easiest way in. "It's not a Mass, it's telling the Christmas story," Peter says. The Cathedral's four choirs are due to sing together: the Junior Choir, the Senior Girls, the boys whose voices are changing, and the Cathedral Choir.
Some pieces will be new to almost everyone, including Sally Beamish's In the Stillness, a picture of Christmas in an English church. Others are the carols everyone knows and loves to sing. The evening ends with an arrangement of Ding Dong Merrily on High that Peter calls "just a hoot".
You can see more photos from the evening in our Flickr album.
Come and hear the choir for yourself at the Carol Service on the 11th December 2026, more details to follow.
📷 CMcG
