A Requiem for Those Who Had None | The Fourth Choir

Music
  • Venue

    Southwark Cathedral

  • Time

    7:30 PM

  • Price

    £10-£25

  • Book Tickets

A Pride concert by The Fourth Choir, London's critically acclaimed LGBTQ+ classical choir.

A Pride concert by The Fourth Choir commemorating the thousands of people who were executed for being in same-sex relationships between the 12th and 19th centuries.  
 
The main work to be performed will be Victoria’s Requiem of 1605, written for the funeral of the Empress Maria of Spain, sister of Philip II and mother of two Holy Roman Emperors.  
 
The concert will include accounts of some of the people who were executed for this victimless ‘crime’ and we are pleased to announce that Sir Chris Bryant M.P. will be our Special Guest. Sir Chris’s 2024 book, James and John, is a scrupulously-researched history of James Pratt and John Smith, the last people in Europe to be executed for same-sex relations, who were arrested in Southwark in 1835 and publicly hanged at Newgate Gaol later the same year.
 
The concert will also include works by Purcell, the Renaissance nun Raphaella Aleotti, and Dominique Phinot (who was himself executed for homosexual activities in Lyon in 1556) as well as works by contemporary composers, Jamie Powe and Michael Buessewitz-Qurm.
 
"London’s exceptional LGBTQ+ group” The Observer
“Everything sounded flawless…a performance that resonated deeply” ★★★★★ Trouw (Dutch national newspaper)