Choral Union brings university, community together in music

In a particularly congenial intersection of town and gown, the 170-voice Choral Union will present two substantial works by Franz Joseph Haydn and Zoltan Koda’ly on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 9 and 10.

Haydn may have composed “Theresienmesse” (1799) for the mother of Marie Antoinette, Marie Therese of Austria. Civil authorities commissioned Koda’ly’s “Te Deum” in 1936 to mark the 200th anniversary of the liberation of Budapest from the Turks. The work remains a masterful synthesis of Catholic and Protestant liturgies, as well as selected traditions of Hungarian folk music.

The performance begins at 8 p.m. on Saturday and 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. Both concerts take place in the Mosse Humanities Building’s Mills Hall. Tickets are $15 general, $8 seniors and students, available in advance at the Wisconsin Union Box Office, 262-2201. For more information, call 263-9485, or visit http://www.music.wisc.edu/.