Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
Tue, Jun 5 2012, 11:35PM
Practically always and almost in all civilisations, music has accompanied the mystery of death. Particularly in the West, this tradition had signaled the form of Requiem. Numerous composers have embarked upon this Mass of the inexpressible pain of the loss of the loving ones, by leaving each and every one his own vision of the beyond life, by giving life to the most powerful, poignant, sublime expression of fear, long for a lost life, unfathomable desperation or the ultimate hope.
This genre of honouring the departed has gave birth to a great number of masterworks throughout the centuries, showing that the mystery of death can constantly and profoundly inspire the imagination of the gifted composers.
From early Renaissance to the end of last century, we have experienced numerous works on this subject, not necessarily always using the term or even the form "Requiem". Bach wrote his superb "Actus Tragicus" ( a Cantata) and the poignant Motet "O jesu Christ, mein Lebens' Licht". Purcell his Funeral Music for Queen Mary, Lully his poignantly vehement "Miserere", De Lalande his dark "De Profundis" or "Die Trauermusik" by Johan Ludwig Bach.
So, let's see how many we may collect in this forum along with great recordings of them. To start with, I present one (or two for the most influential 18th and 19th centuries) illustrious specimen from every century:
- Ocheghem : Requiem. Probably, the very first of the genre and an early sombre masterpiece.
- Richafort : Requiem (around 1520). More meditative than strict and sombre. Powerful expression of the pain of loss.
- Victoria : Requiem (1605). The reference of the Spanish genius in the genre.
- Bach : Actus Tragicus (1727). A masterpiece beyond any description.
- Mozart : Requiem (1791). The Requiem par excellence. The greatest of them all: the most refined and, at the same time, the most powerful in expression, while brilliantly composed.
- Berlioz : Grand messe des morts (1837). The "Requiem" of reference. One of the most powerful and majestic, but also austere and plain Masses of the Dead.
- Brahms : Ein deutsches Requiem (1868). A great meditative, strict and very austere masterpiece and a very German too.
- Britten : War Requiem (1962). Profoundly spiritual and humane at the same time, a masterpiece of our times.
- Greif : Requiem (1999). The latest (to my knowledge) masterpiece of the past century that marked quite a few great works in the choral music and in this genre as well.
Your imput is welcome.
Parla
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 2:34AM
#2
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
An excellent list of requiems indeed, but I’m a bit surprised you forgot Verdi’s Requiem. It has been said that the Requiem was for Verdi what ‘The Last Judgment’ was for Michelangelo.
The Day of WRATH!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdT1Mw4QJT8&feature=player_embedded
More info on Verdi’s Requiem:
http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics2/verdirequiem.html
The requiems of György Ligeti and Alfred Schnittke are also worth a nod.
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 10:44AM
#3
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
Amazing, the one who does not like lists, partially because he sees them as a "dumbing down", and last denied making a list when he listed the works he would like to appear on CD, goes and makes a list.
Requiems! I could list the one's you have omitted...but I won't.
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 11:14AM
#4
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
Don't read me wrong, fw and Troyen. The thread is to familiarize us with the numerous works on Requiem by hundreds (if not thousands) of composers throughout the centuries.
I just gave a sample of one composer (or two for 18th and 19th centuries) per century. I have plenty more to enumerate, but I invite the forum members to give us their inputs. Verdi's Requiem is a monumental one and a very unique case of an Opera composer to provide a work of this proportion.
You are welcome.
Parla
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 12:53PM
#5
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
An excellent list of requiems indeed, but I’m a bit surprised you forgot Verdi’s Requiem. It has been said that the Requiem was for Verdi what ‘The Last Judgment’ was for Michelangelo.
The Verdi Requiem is most exquisite and one of my favourite musical pieces, but actually I wouldn't put it down under "Requiem" in the sense of a religious mass. It's spiritual but not religious, I think. These are just labels and don't take any of the power of the work, but I'm happy if it's not in the list.
Perhaps one could have added the Fauré though...
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 1:49PM
#6
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
Like the subject and there are many, many examples of Requiem over the years
Parla you wrote:
"......and a very unique case of an Opera composer...."
One should not qualify the word unique. Something is either unique or not, but not some degree of uniqueness.
Best wishes
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 2:10PM
#7
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
An interesting topic Parla. The Brahms is a masterpiece in my book alright. I agree with FW that Ligeti's Requiem should be on there. I would agree with Mozart and Berlioz, and of course the Ockeghem is a work of great purity. The Britten is of course very individual in its use of war poetry.
Faure yes and Durufle? Don't know the Greif - seems an appropriate name for a composer of a requiem!
The only problem for me with the Verdi, great work as it is, isn't so much the dramatic and quasi-operatic feeling to it, but the fact that I can't disassociate memories of singing the work in the alto section of the school choir at 11 and then again in the tenor section at 17. (The music director repeated the work six years later due to its success, and broke his rule of not repeating a work within ten years!)
At the age of 11 anyway I found the Dies Irae and the Libera Me absolutely terrifying, and that mournful Lacrimosa etc...
As such it is not now the kind of work I would choose to listen to when I need something spiritually uplifting.
The composition of a Requiem for a composer is a heartbreaker. Perhaps that is why not all composers attempt it.
Mark
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 2:12PM
#8
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
One very unusual work in the genre like the Britten, which does deserve a special mention, is the Requiem by Delius, not based on the traditional Latin words, but on words collected by the composer from the Bible. Lyrics such as:
'Our days here are as one day', 'Why then dissemble we with a tale of falsehoods?' 'Therefore eat thy bread in gladness/and lift up thy heart and rejoice in thy wine/and take to thyself some woman who thou lovest/and enjoy life'. 'I honour the man who can love life/yet without base fear can die/He has attained the heights/and won the crown of life'. The work ends with 'Eternal renewing, everything on earth/will return again'.
In other words, eat, drink and be merry guys!
Delius completed it in 1916. Its performances in the concert hall have been shockingly few. My recording is on HMV Greensleeve, Heather Harper/John Shirley-Quirk, Royal Philharmonic /Meredith Davies. It is a rewarding piece.
Mark
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 4:52PM
#9
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
Nice idea for a thread Parla!
A few suggestions from me:
Earliest of all, even before Ockeghem is the Gregorian chant of the requiem mass, and the burial service. It contains some of the earliest Gregorian chants, as well as the famous 'Dies Irae' tune (which is later, probably 13th century).
Then, an austerely beautiful work of Schütz, his Musikalische Exequien (sets some of the same texts as Brahms later used in his German Requiem).
Next, another magnificent Bach Cantata, the so-called Trauer-Ode (BWV198), written in memory of the consort of Augustus the Strong, who died in 1727. [In passing the superb Actus Tragicus you mention (BWV106) is much earlier than 1727, probably 1707, one of his earliest cantatas].
Finally a curiosity, the Requiem Mass of Francesco Cavalli (better known for his Venetian Operas), written by him to be performed at his own funeral!
Best wishes to all.
Chris
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 6:35PM
#10
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
Frank Martin, Requiem. Restrained, delicate, lovely, no big bangs. I'm very fond of the composer's own recording on the late-lamented Jecklin label, but admit I haven't heard the other one.
Stravinsky, Requiem Canticles. Late Stravinsky - hyper-terse, not a note wasted. Played at the compser's own funeral. I got to know it in the 70s in one of those wonderful free-admission BBC College Concerts (anyone remember those?) in a superb performance conducted by Gielen. There are a number of strong performances out there, including the composer's own.
Hindemith's '"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd": A Requiem for Those We Love.' Another work which steers away from the Latin liturgy to become an eloquent multiple commemoration - Walt Whitman's elegy to Lincoln is set in a piece occasioned by Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, but the American fallen of WWII are also remembered. American-period Hindemith, firmly tonal.
Henze, Requiem - in fact purely instrumental, a remarkably powerful evocation and also critique of the tradition it's evoking. I know it in Metzmacher's recording.
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 8:15PM
#11
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
Hi Der Singende Teufel. Can you tell me more about the Frank Martin Requiem? Only I am very fond of his work and I haven't come across a recording of the Requiem. I believe it was premiered in Lausanne Cathedral about a year before his death (1973 then) with the composer at the helm. Is that right?
Regards
Mark
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 9:48PM
#12
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuriesDeath
You're doing a fine job so far, guys. Already mentioned some rare and fascinating works, mostly from the last century.
Martin's Requiem (I'm afraid an interesting but rather marginal work) has been recorded only on the defunct Swiss label Jecklin. Henze's one is unique, since it's an instrumental one, but not the only one. Remember Berg's Violin Concerto ("in the memory of an angel", composed for the loss of one of the daughters of Alma Mahler)? Or Shostakovich's Piano Trio no.2, written in the memory of one of his unduly departed friends. Likewise, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov's Piano Trios.
Hindemith's Requiem "for Those We love" is a great input, der singende Teufel. Almost forgotten, definitely rarely performed, unjustly underrated. Stravisky's Requiem Canticles is also well spotted as well as Cavalli's one on the other side of the spectrum. Delius is a revelation too; so rarely performed. However, not a major one. Ligetti and Schnittke are truly "worth a nod" as 20th century vital and almost pivotal works in the genre.
Ganymede refers to Faure with some reluctance. This is a truly remarkable work, demonstrating the original simplicity of delivering such subtle nuances of the unfathomable pain. The opposite of Berlioz. Faure gives to death a "human face" and a very artistic value as a reconciliation with the inevitable fate of us all.
Olivier Greif's Requiem is a modern masterpiece. Greif was a French composer (1950-2000). Maybe, he was aware of his fate and his untimely passing, so he composed another two great instrumental works on the matter of death: his superb Cello/Piano Sonata da requiem and his "Deathfugue" for String Quartet! His (Choral) Requiem, funnily has been recorded by the BBC Singers (under John Poole), in the very marginal and obscure French label Triton (not to be confused with the brilliant -mostly Piano dedicated- Japanese label).
Some more hints? What about Penderecki's Polish Requiem (1984), Mark? Or, Dvorak's subtle but great Requiem (1890)? Or, Gossec's Grande Messe des morts (1760), un underrated masterpiece of his time? Or, Biber's Requiem a 15 (a very rare "exultant" Requiem" where death is "defeated" by the human spirit)?
More food for thought.
Parla
Wed, Jun 6 2012, 11:56PM
#13
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuriesDeath
You're absolutely right, partsong, and in fact the Jecklin recording is of the Lausanne premiere you mention. It's an understated but powerful piece: four soloists, mixed choir, orchestra and organ, only about 45 mins. Martin himself talks about playing down the element of counterpoint to throw the liturgical text into relief, and giving the organ a role as important as the orchestra's (the Agnus Dei is a dialogue between the solo alto and the organ). There's another recording on the Musiques Suisses label, conducted by Klaus Knall - this was what I meant by 'the other one,' but I don't like pronouncing on recordings I haven't heard. I'm sure readers who know the piece, or other Martin, will want to assess its qualities for themselves.
If you aren't averse to music of the later c20 Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Requiem for a Young Poet is immensely impressive, and even if you don't respond to its element of excess it does open the way to some remarkably spare and impressive later works. Versions conducted by Bertini and (again) Gielen, who conducted the first performance, used to exist, and there's currently one with Bernhard Kontarsky conducting. Again, I know Gielen's, but won't pretend to omnifamiliarity.
If the thread is, as seemed to be the case, scooping up all pieces that could in some way or other be construed as commemorative, it may never stop. A lot of listeners to English music would I'm sure note the Howells Requiem, but at that level is the Hymnus Paradisi any less relevant? And for pieces without voice, Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem?
Thu, Jun 7 2012, 12:19AM
#14
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuriesDeath
And Mark - for what it's worth, I tell a lie: there's a still more recent recording of the Martin, conducted by Matthias Hoffmann-Borggrefe, on the German label Troubadisc. You should be able to find the piece somehow!
Thu, Jun 7 2012, 6:32AM
#15
RE: Requiem: hundreds ways to sing it in the centuries
Der Singende Teufel-
Many thanks indeed for your thorough post. You've really whetted my appetite for the Martin with your comments. Here's hoping I can now find it! I'm delighted as I wasn't aware of the recordings at all. I'm a very big fan and have a number of his works - six or seven CD's, including the mass for double choir, Etudes, violin concerto, In Terra Pax, Maria Tryptichon etc...and the amazing Polyptique for violin and two string orchestras on the ECM issue. An important and underrated composer for me, and very sensitive music.
(I have a little Zimmerman on record - can't just remember without checking! Your other suggestions are useful also).
Lots to look into. PS Only just found last month that there's a recording of Frank Martin's Symphony on the Naxos site. Another one to order!
Thanks again
Mark
Vic eleison