What is your favorite work of classical music that features a choir?

• I use classical music as a general term, including Baroque, Classical, Romantic and modern "classical" music.

• Answer:

  I would nominate the St. Matthew.   It begins with one of the most mournful instrumental passages in music. The choir enters: gnashing and wailing, with an increasing antiphonal question-and-answer dialogue. At about 2:30, a second choir enters: a boys choir, singing a simple Lutheran hymn tune (a tune which would have been instantly familiar to the flock at Leipzig) about the Lamb of God going to the slaughter. At this point, you think "hey, I'm already openly teary, how can this guy top this when we're only 2:30 in?" And yet somehow, the piece keeps building on top of this shattering opener.       One role that Bach gives the choir is to sing simple reflections on the Passion story, using Bach's harmonizations of familiar (again, familiar to the regulars at Thomaskirche) Lutheran hymns. These simple, heartfelt choral interpolations happen at regular intervals throughout the work and appear designed to allow for meditation on the drama. (The granitic tempo of this example from the Klemperer certainly helps to bring that on that state of mind.)     Another choral role or character is that of "the crowd" of Jerusalem. These tend to be fleeting. A good example is "Weissage uns" (Prophesy to us, Christ, by whom art thou struck?) which is what they say as Christ takes a beating during his first "hearing" before the priests. Note the repetition of "schlug" (to punch or slug).   These crowd parts help push the St. Matthew into its place as one of the greatest of operas, even though it does not belong to that genre and Bach never wrote a true opera.     I can think of other great works where the choir has an even more dominant role, but here I see the choir as having an equal role with the soloists and an equal role in the overall conception of the work.