The Power of Requiem Masses

In last week’s blog I mentioned that I would devote a future blog to the Requiem Mass as a genre, so get ready for some fascinating reading—at least, I find it so.

The Requiem Mass, or Missa pro defunctis (Mass for the Dead), has an intriguing history, and as a liturgy for the dead it deals with nitty-gritty issues in highly dramatic language.  It is celebrated every year in the Catholic Church on All Soul’s Day (November 2), and on the day of or anniversary of the death or burial of a Christian.  This is a potent liturgy that has compelled many composers over the centuries to take up their pen and try to musically express the deepest emotions of the human heart.

The amazing flexibility of the Requiem text has aided their creativity.  The text itself has long been fluid; various poems, prayers and scripture verses found their way into the liturgy between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, and it wasn’t even standardized by the Catholic Church until the sixteenth century.  Even then, churches that could demonstrate at least 200 years of their own local text usage could continue to do so, and variations continued into the 1700s.  Composers didn’t usually set the entire liturgy, they made choices and set the sections that most appealed to them.

Maybe because of this fluidity, or maybe because of the power of its content, “concert,” or non-church, Requiem settings began to appear in the 1800s as composers increasingly used the text as a vehicle for personal expression and individuality; faith was not a requirement!  Some composers even chose their own texts and poetry; Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem is among the earliest and probably most famous examples (his setting came from the Lutheran Requiem tradition, a separate but related genre), but many others followed his lead.

Verdi’s Requiem is in one sense a concert Requiem, since it was primarily intended for the stage, but in another sense it is a traditional Requiem, for he used sections from the liturgical text.  These sections range the gamut of human emotions in the face of death: pleas for rest and mercy, terrified descriptions of Judgment Day, prayers for liberation from Hell, and offerings of praise for God’s salvation.  Some are intended for the dead, some for the living, all mixed together in a powerful jumble that cuts to the core of what it means to be a human being.

Perhaps the most unforgettable movement is the Dies irae, “Day of wrath.”  I still remember, in graduate school, the first rehearsal with the orchestra, with all those trumpets blaring around us recreating the Last Judgment.   I simply stood there with my mouth open, so overwhelmed I was unable to produce a note.  Take four minutes, if you can, and listen to this performance by Zubin Mehta.  Even on a small computer monitor, the power of it is incredibly stirring!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic Director and Conductor

Master Chorus Eastside