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To commemorate the return of the restored organ Richard Coulson composed a Requiem, which was given its
first performance on Palm Sunday 2006.
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‘It has dominated my composing work recently’, he stated. ‘It is something I have longed to write
as a memorial to an uncle, Albert Rodger, as well as to my father and mother. Albert Rodger was a 25-yr-old
engine room artificer on HMS Natal, a warship which inexplicably and tragically blew up off Scapa Flow in World
War One – not as a result of enemy action – with the appalling loss of 421 lives. He was a great favourite
of my mother’s.
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‘The Requiem is in the melodic style of John Rutter, one of our great 20th century church composers,
is in Latin and includes the Ave Maria'.
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