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Music Ministry Chorale sings Schutz

For the past 15 years, the music Ministry Chorale (MMC) has staged  concerts that have featured a mix of Ghanaian classics by Ephraim Amu, J. H. Kwabena Nketia and others; popular Ghanaian gospel songs;  Western classical compositions; American “Negro Spirituals”.

On Saturday April 19, the MMC will depart from this tradition to perform a classical choral work, titled Four Passions by Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), a German composer and organist considered as one of the greatest of Bach’s predecessors. 

The free performance, to take place at the British Council Auditorium from  5 pm will open with selections of pieces of other music on the Passion composed by G. F. Handel, J. S. Bach, W.A. Mozart and J. Stainer. These will be followed by the main choral work of the night – excerpts from the “Four Passions” by Heinrich Schütz. 

For some Ghanaians, the performance would be a renaissance of the music of Heinrich Schütz because  Four Passions was first performed in Ghana in 1964, nearly 50 years ago, by a choral group at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.

 The group consisted mainly of the expatriate teaching staff and their spouses, and some Ghanaians, including Mr. Richard Acquaah-Harrison who was then a senior part-time lecturer in the department of architecture, building and planning. 

His wife, Mrs. Muriel Acquaah-Harrison, accompanied the choir on the spinet, an instrument like a small upright piano, which sounds like a harpsichord.

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