THE combined choirs of Ilkley and Otley choral societies will perform at an Easter Celebration of Music by Mozart and Haydn this weekend, dedicated to the late Lydia Pettit.

The choirs will be joined at St Margaret’s Church by celebrated soloists and the Yorkshire Chamber Ensemble.

The performance this Saturday night is dedicated to Lydia Pettit, who sadly passed away recently after singing regularly with the Ilkley Choral Society since it was formed in 1949.

One of Lydia’s last wishes before she became ill was to sing in the concert on her 90th birthday and to bid farewell to Alan Horsey, the societies’ musical director.

Mr Horsey will be conductor for the evening, in what will be his farewell concert as Ilkley musical director of the societies for 19 years. He is retiring, and the societies say his musical expertise and sense of humour will be missed by everyone.

In a concert starting at 7pm, the choirs will perform Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor (K626). The choirs will also perform Mozart’s Ave verum corpus (K618) and Franz Joseph Haydn’s Te Deum in C.

Soprano Joanne Dexter will also sing the motet Exsultate Jubilate (K165). The other celebrated soloists for the performance are Alison Hudson (alto), Greg Tassell (tenor) and Neil Baker (bass).

The Requiem Mass was composed by Mozart in Vienna in 1791while he was gravely ill and was left unfinished at the time of the composer’s death on December 5, 1791. There seems to be a mystery surrounding the story of Mozart’s Requiem. The Mass was commissioned anonymously by Franz von Walsegg to commemorate the anniversary of his wife’s death.

It was later believed that Walsegg intended to pass the piece off as his own composition. However, Mozart, commenced writing the Mass but tragically died at the age of 35, after completing about two thirds of the work’s musical material. This untimely death of one of the world’s greatest composers resulted in what turned out to be Mozart writing his own Requiem.

The Requiem was finally completed by Franz Xaver Suessmayr (1766 – 1803), an Austrian composer and made famous for his completion of Mozart’s Requiem. It cannot be shown to what extent Suessmayr may have depended on now-lost “scraps of paper” depicting music written by Mozart for the remainder of the work but Suessmayr later claimed the Sanctus and Agnus Dei as his own.

Included in the concert programme this evening are further works by Mozart and Haydn.

Exsultate Jubilate (K165) or Rejoice, Be Glad was written by Mozart in 1773. The religious solo motet was composed by Mozart while he was still in his teens during a stay in Milan. It was originally written for the Italian castrato Venanzio Rauzzini (1746 – 1810) who’s powerful high voice was greatly admired by Mozart.

He wrote Ave verum corpus in 1791, considered to be one of Mozart’s most famous and popular works. It was written to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi and is still included in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.

Te Deum was written by Franz Joseph Haydn in 1799.

The choral piece is in three parts and was commissioned by Empress Marie Therese, the wife of Franz I of Austria.

Tickets for the performance are available from The Grove Bookshop, Ilkley, or at the door and cost £12 with no concessions.