Frozen in their seats, an audience of close to 800 people sit for an hour and a half watching the Libertas Choir and Orchestra perform Giuseppe Verdi’s much-celebrated Requiem in the Endler Theatre.
They sit, visibly enchanted, as the bold instrumental melodies match flawlessly with those of the choir and the soloists.
It was an impressive demonstration of Verdi’s flair for the dramatic, and an accomplishment by musical standards.
The conductor of the Libertas Choir, Johan De Villiers, spoke to MatieMedia about his background and about what makes music important.
“I grew up in a musical home,” De Villiers says. “When I was young, my father used to put on the music and point out ‘that’s Bach’ or ‘this here is Beethoven’.”
De Villiers’ life took something of an unexpected turn when, in 1977, he was chosen to be the conductor of the Stellenbosch University Choir. Having an academic background in mathematics, he says his time with the university choir became “all-consuming”, adding that it became difficult to balance his time between the choir, research and family.
Nonetheless, during his seven-year tenure as conductor, the choir enjoyed considerable prominence and performed in venues across the globe.
In 1989, De Villiers founded a community choir along with his wife, Louwina. The Libertas Choir began as a multiracial choir, and at the time its activities were restricted by apartheid regulation.
In the years since, they have gone on to earn sizeable acclaim both locally and abroad.
The Libertas Choir rehearses ahead of the Requiem performance. PHOTO: Byron Mühlberg.
“We have a lot of motivation and we work hard,” says De Villiers, “and we are rewarded by being able to perform to audiences around the country and the world.”
Being an expert both in music and mathematics, De Villiers was enthusiastic in talking about the relationship between the two as well as the nature of beauty.
“Fundamentally, music conforms to mathematical principles,” De Villiers says. “A rhythm, for example, is determined by a progression of the natural numbers, where a melody is determined by the frequency of the sound waves which are picked up by the human ear.”
According to his view, what makes something beautiful is whether or not its physical proportions correspond to a mathematical constant known as the golden ratio.
“Whether we’re talking about architecture, the human face, or music,” says De Villiers, “the golden ratio shows up everywhere. And it seems to correspond precisely with our perception of something as being the ‘most beautiful’”.
If the cause of beauty is mathematical, then the measure of beauty would be its longevity.
Aside from the classical greats, the Libertas Choir also regularly performs contemporary and traditional African music. PHOTO: Byron Mühlberg.
“The genius of Verdi and others,” says De Villiers, “is that they have stood the test of time. Their music is still just as relevant today as it was on the day it was written.”