The sounds of youth and death

A British composer enters fascinating territory with a new Requiem performed by Brussels’ children

Remember those awkward childhood experiences of being dragged to hear middle-aged men play Peter and the Wolf or The Nutcracker? Not that all children’s concerts back then were tedious and prissy. At their best, they could even be witty and illuminating, like the Young People’s Concerts staged by Leonard Bernstein at the Lincoln Center in the 1960s or some of the concert- lectures still regularly organised by the Jeunesses Musicales. But lectures they remained.

Lately though, the whole idea of children's concerts has been turned on its head, with the new byword being concerts by, rather than just for, children. The kids are no longer passive onlookers: they are singers, dancers, even composers. Classical music, which for so long perceived itself as requiring years of exposure to appreciate, let alone perform, is suddenly courting the energy, spontaneity and freshness of the younger generation.

The Brussels Requiem, a new work about to première at De Munt, admirably reflects this trend. The latest in a cycle of Requiems staged at the Brussels opera house over several seasons, it will be performed by a 40-strong orchestra, a flautist and two soloists (soprano Anne-Catherine Gillet and bass Giovanni-Battista Parodi), as well as 282 children.

These include the suave-voiced singers of De Munt's children's choir, but the vast majority of them have zero formal musical training: they are your just average, pop-fuelled 10- and 11-year- olds, many of them from immigrant backgrounds, bursting with energy and natural talent.

At a rehearsal last week, I watched in amazement as about 70 of them sang a long and demanding score in nine languages while performing complex dance moves, clawing at the air like savage beasts, rolling on the floor to evoke the sea or just standing still for long minutes on end - the part they seemed to have the most problems with.

Vigorously helming the group were project stage director Benoît De Leersnyde, choreographer Ela Baumann and, singing the male solos himself, its British composer Howard Moody. Moody, who has a long history of working with children, began more than a year ago by running workshops in six Brussels primary schools, most of them in working-class areas of Vorst, Schaarbeek, Laken and Sint- Joost. He offered the kids their first glimpse of the classical sound world by playing them bits of Verdi and Fauré. He asked them to ponder issues of rest, anger, paradise and other themes contained in the classical Requiem. He even encouraged them to compose a few songs of their own.

He then went back to Britain and produced an entirely new score made up of ear-catching tunes, plangent flute solos and more abrasive, dissonant moments. "The actual writing took four months," he says. "But that's not counting the time I spent thinking about it, lying awake in bed."

Weaving in and out of French, Dutch, English, Hebrew and Arabic, the piece is a vivid and touching portrait of the cultural patchwork that is Brussels, fed from visions and impressions Moody garnered during his stay here. "The statue of Saint Michael that sits atop the Brussels town hall, that young girl singing in Arabic as she swung from a lamppost in the city centre, the poppies of In Flanders Fields and water, which is so present here in the Low Countries," he lists. "All these various elements found their way into the piece, although not always consciously."

The piece is also a searing, unflinching meditation on death conveyed through quotes from Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe and Buddhist mantras, as well as images of Persephone being drawn to the underworld and Charon crossing the Styx. This is not the usual stuff of children's concerts, and you can't help feeling that Moody has broken some unspoken taboo when you see some of the young performers carrying the corpse of one of their friends or singing lines such as: "My young life has an end", from an old Flemish song.

"Children know, perhaps better than anyone else, what death is like," argues Moody. "See how intensely they respond to the death of their pets or of their grandparents. It's terribly important for them."

It is hard to overestimate the extent to which these kids have been changed by the Requiem experience. "Their teachers are telling us that they've gained in confidence and maturity," says Anne-Sophie Noël of De Munt's education department. "Some have even expressed an interest in joining the children's choir."

"It's an altogether different way of learning," agrees Moody, "away from blackboards and written words, which are not suited to everyone. And, because they sometimes get to sing in their own language, they can be the experts, too." Ultimately, the music world is a winner, too. "For many of these children," says Moody, "De Munt used to be that place close to McDonald's. Hopefully, when they hear about it again many years from now, they'll remember that they once did a show here. And they might want to come back. And their parents, their friends, so many people will be touched by it."

Not to mention that such experiments could open new roads for composers. "It's a new kind of music making, much in the spirit of Verdi, who also composed from the heart and for the people," says Moody. "These children are gold dust. When are opera houses going to realise it?"