Doug Purl wrote:

>...  I no longer seek to justify my tastes.  I am so comfortable ossifying
>into a crotchety old fool that I wouldn't wish to surrender the pleasure.
>Somehow rigidity feels like strength.

No-one's beyond redemption, Doug.

>I find Verdi's Requiem sublime, and like Faure's too.  As much as I like
>Bach, I find his cantatas tedious. [...] In the cantatas, Bach's talent is
>disobliged by the tedium of all that preposterous theology.

So is it the theology or just the cantatas? Do you find more to like in
the Passions, for example?

>I am open for suggestions.  Does anyone know of choral compositions wherein
>inspiration lasts the length of the piece, and beauty solaces even tragedy?

Hmmm, I'd say the two are not necessarily linked.  But I too tend to
enjoy all choral compositions for their musical content.  Religious
subjects do not, IMHO, carry a work to a different plane.  I prefer small
chamber groups, usually acapella or with a handful of instruments in
support.  I can think of no better starting point than Schubert's secular
songs for male chorus.  Robert Shaw's ensemble on Telarc give an excellent
performance which is full of the usual themes: love and longing, landscape
and emotion, wandering.  Brahms' secular chorusses are similary wonderful.
See Steve Schwartz' review in the list archives and my addendum about the
RIAS Chammerchor recording on Harmonia Mundi.  On religious themes, I'd
suggest Bruckner's Motets or the Rachmaninov Vespers.  Both have been well
served by the Corydon Singers under Matthew Best (Hyperion), though some
prefer a Russian ensemble for the latter.  Another winner in Best's
discography is the Vaughan Williams disc which has a star-studded cast
singing his 'Serenade to Music', which is supposed to have moved
Rachmaninov to tears on its premiere.  There's solace for you.  But beauty
solacing tragedy? Top of the heap for me would be the Brahms requiem.
Haitink's recording is well-liked, but I have the Gardiner, which has a
great transparency to it that I prefer to heavier approaches by modern
symphony orchestras.  And it has a sense of optimism that I also experience
with the Faure.

Ruben