What is a Requiem Mass?
A Requiem is a Mass for the repose of the dead, which is the traditional Christian funeral rite.
As early as the late second century, specific rites for the dead were included in the text of the Mass at funerals.
The earliest examples of musical settings for the Requiem date back to the 10th century. The singing was exclusively monophonic plainchant, without measures or tempo.
This remained so until Johannes Ockeghem wrote the first Requiem using polyphony, circa 1460.
For concert performance (rather than in the context of a funeral), the Requiem Mass was first set to music for orchestra and choir in the 18th century. Most of the Requiems performed today date from the 18th and 19th centuries. As a concert piece, the requiem is usually longer than in the liturgical setting.
Traditionally, for concert perfor-mance composers have felt free to rearrange the texts of the Requiem Mass. and have often added addi-tional texts from the burial service and propers, including relevant scriptural texts. Brahms' Requiem, for example, dispenses with the traditional Latin rite entirely: the German text is derived exclusively from Holy Scripture.
I've included all the traditional Requiem sections, but I also chose six explicitly hopeful and encour-aging scriptural texts for the second half of the piece, as the tone of the Requiem progresses from darkness to light, from fear to hope, from despair to joy. In the eleventh move-ment, for example, the text is Isaiah 35: "Sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
My work on the Requiem began with travel to 24 cathedrals and signi-ficant churches in nine countries. Only when the filming was done did I associate a Requiem text with a cathedral or church. Because each movement of the Requiem was composed to accompany the video of a particular cathedral, tonally the composition leans toward the cinematic, with melodies, harmonies, and orchestration intended to serve and emphasize the unique beauty and transcendence of the archi-tecture and art of each sacred space.
Composers whose requiem compo-sitions are commonly in the modern repertoire include:
Giuseppe Verdi (Messa da Requiem, 1874)
Mozart (Requiem, 1791, unfinished at his death)
Hector Berlioz (Grande Messe des morts, 1837)
Johannes Brahms (A German Requiem, to Words of the Holy Scriptures, 1868);
Gaetano Donizetti (Messa da requiem, 1835)
Anton Bruckner (Requiem in D minor, 1849)
Antonín Dvořák (Requiem, 1891)
Andrew Lloyd Webber (Requiem, 1985)
Igor Stravinsky (the brief Requiem Canticles, 1966)
Krzysztof Penderecki (Polskie Requiem, 1984)
François-Joseph Gossec (Requiem, 1760)
