Danville concert honors Virginia Tech victims

Hearing Johannes Brahms’ “Requiem” at Sacred Heart Catholic Church Sunday rekindled memories for Virginia Tech alumni Fred Shanks.

“It was beautiful and a perfect selection for the occasion,” Shanks said after hearing the work performed by the Danville Area Choral Arts Society.

Choral members, led by music director Robert Sutter, sang Brahm’s masterpiece at the church Sunday afternoon to mark the first anniversary of the mass shootings that took place at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. That day, student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded two-dozen others at the school before committing suicide.

Shanks’s former engineering professor, G.V. Loganathan, was among those who died. Shanks, who attended Virginia Tech in the late ’70s, recalled Loganathan as a young, energetic instructor.

“His face is just plastered in my memory,” Shanks, president of the Hokie Club of Danville, said.

Shanks’ organization and the Danville chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association provided ushers for Sunday’s event. Singers, with Sylvia Curl as accompanist, carried Requiem’s seven movements in about 70 minutes.

Carolyn Smith, executive director of the society, said about 200 people attended. Smith said Sutter recommended Brahms’s “Requiem” and the DACAS board discussed and planned the performance.

Brahms’ “Requiem” is non-traditional because it’s a mass for the living instead of the deceased, Smith said. For Smith, the Biblically-based work presents hope for loved ones of those who died in the attack, that they will all see each other again. Brahms takes passages on human mortality from Psalms, following them with messages on immortality from the New Testament.

Smith pointed out a key line — “Ye shall again behold me” — in the soprano solo movement she performed, “Ye Now Are Sorrowful,” as a central message in Brahms’s piece.

The death of Brahms’s mother influenced composition of his work, Smith said. He finished the work in 1866, but added the fifth movement, “Ye Now Are Sorrowful,” in 1868, three years after her death. 

Smith’s solo was an answer to D. Raul West’s earlier, pleading baritone, “Lord, Make Me to Know,” she said.

“While it’s scripturally-based, it’s also a piece for all humanity,” Smith said of “Requiem.”

Smith said DACAS’s presentation of “Requiem” was one way for the organization to provide challenging, high-maintenance music to the community. Also, DACAS gives aspiring singers a chance to perform those works. The organization was incorporated in 1989 and has about 40 members, Smith said.

For Shanks, the Virginia Tech massacre is similar to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Sept. 11 attacks among life-altering tragedies.

“They’re things that change you forever,” he said.

Contact John R. Crane at
or (434) 791-7987.