Music for the Requiem Mass


Music for the Requiem Mass is any music that accompanies the Requiem, or Mass for the Dead, in the Catholic Church. This church service has inspired hundreds of compositions, including settings by Victoria, Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, Fauré, Dvořák, Duruflé and Britten. For centuries settings of the Mass for the Dead were to be chanted in liturgical service monophonically. Later the settings became polyphonic, Victoria's famous 1605 a cappella work being an example. By Mozart's time it was standard to embed the dramatic and long Dies irae sequence, and to score with orchestra. Eventually many settings of the Requiem, not least Verdi's, were essentially concert pieces unsuitable for church service.
Image:RequiemAeternamChant.jpg|thumb|400px|Incipit of the Gregorian chant introit for a Requiem Mass, from the Liber Usualis.

Common texts

The following are the texts that have been set to music. Note that the Libera Me and the In Paradisum are not part of the text of the Catholic Mass for the Dead itself, but a part of the burial rite that immediately follows. In Paradisum was traditionally said or sung as the body left the church, and the Libera Me is said/sung at the burial site before interment. These became included in musical settings of the Requiem in the 19th century as composers began to treat the form more liberally.

Introit

From 4 Esdras 2:34–35; Psalm 65:1-2



Kyrie eleison

This is as the Kyrie in the Ordinary of the Mass:




This is Greek. Each utterance is sung three times, though sometimes that is not the case when sung polyphonically.

Gradual

From 4 Esdras 2:34–35; Psalm 112:6



Tract




Sequence

A sequence is a liturgical poem sung, when used, after the Tract. The sequence employed in the Requiem, Dies irae, attributed to Thomas of Celano, has been called "the greatest of hymns", worthy of "supreme admiration". The Latin text is included in the Requiem Mass in the 1962 Roman Missal. An early English version was translated by William Josiah Irons in 1849.

Offertory








Sanctus

This is as the Sanctus prayer in the Ordinary of the Mass:



Agnus Dei

This is as the Agnus Dei in the Ordinary of the Mass, but with the petitions miserere nobis changed to dona eis requiem, and dona nobis pacem to dona eis requiem sempiternam:

Lux æterna





As mentioned above, there is no Gloria, Alleluia or Credo in these musical settings.

Pie Jesu

Some text extracts have been set to music independently, such as the Pie Jesu in the settings of Fauré, Dvořák, Duruflé and Rutter. Pie Jesu are late words in the Dies irae and they are followed by the final words of the Agnus Dei:




Settings sometimes include passages from the "Absolution at the bier" or "Commendation of the dead person", which in the case of a funeral, follows the conclusion of the Mass.

Libera me




In paradisum




History of musical compositions

For many centuries the texts of the requiem were sung to Gregorian melodies. The Requiem by Johannes Ockeghem, written sometime in the later half of the 15th century, is the earliest surviving polyphonic setting. There was a setting by the elder composer Guillaume Du Fay, possibly earlier, which is now lost: Ockeghem's may have been modelled on it. Many early compositions employ different texts that were in use in different liturgies around Europe before the Council of Trent set down the texts given above. The requiem of Brumel, circa 1500, is the first to include the Dies Iræ. In the early polyphonic settings of the Requiem, there is considerable textural contrast within the compositions themselves: simple chordal or fauxbourdon-like passages are contrasted with other sections of contrapuntal complexity, such as in the Offertory of Ockeghem's Requiem.
In the 16th century, more and more composers set the Requiem mass. In contrast to practice in setting the Mass Ordinary, many of these settings used a cantus-firmus technique, something which had become quite archaic by mid-century. In addition, these settings used less textural contrast than the early settings by Ockeghem and Brumel, although the vocal scoring was often richer, for example in the six-voice Requiem by Jean Richafort which he wrote for the death of Josquin des Prez. Other composers before 1550 include Pedro de Escobar, Antoine de Févin, Cristóbal de Morales, and Pierre de la Rue; that by la Rue is probably the second oldest, after Ockeghem's.
Over 2,000 Requiem compositions have been composed to the present day. Typically the Renaissance settings, especially those not written on the Iberian Peninsula, may be performed a cappella, whereas, beginning around 1600 composers more often preferred to use instruments to accompany a choir, and also include vocal soloists. There is great variation between compositions in how much of the liturgical text is set to music.
Most composers omit sections of the liturgical prescription, most frequently the Gradual and the Tract. Fauré omits the Dies iræ, while the very same text had often been set by French composers in previous centuries as a stand-alone work.
Sometimes composers divide an item of the liturgical text into two or more movements; because of the length of its text, the Dies iræ is the most frequently divided section of the text. The Introit and Kyrie, being immediately adjacent in the actual Roman Catholic liturgy, are often composed as one movement.
Musico-thematic relationships among movements within a Requiem can be found as well.

Requiem in concert

Beginning in the 18th century and continuing through the 19th, many composers wrote what are effectively concert works, which, by virtue of employing forces too large, or lasting such a considerable duration, prevent them being readily used in an ordinary funeral service; the requiems of Gossec, Berlioz, Verdi, and Dvořák are essentially dramatic concert oratorios. A counter-reaction to this tendency came from the Cecilian movement, which recommended restrained accompaniment for liturgical music, and frowned upon the use of operatic vocal soloists.

Notable compositions

Many composers have composed a Requiem. Some of the most notable include the following :
  • Ockeghem: Requiem, the earliest to survive, written in the mid-to-late 15th century
  • Morales: Two notable requiems: Officium defunctorum and Missa pro defunctis.
  • Guerrero: Requiem, 1582.
  • Victoria: Requiem of 1603
  • Fux: Kaiserrequiem, 1720.
  • Zelenka: Requiem in D minor, ZWV 48 After Augustus the Strong Circa 1730
  • Michael Haydn: Requiem in C minor, 1771.
  • Mozart: Requiem, K. 626
  • Salieri: Requiem
  • Cherubini: Requiem in C minor and Requiem in D minor
  • Berlioz: Grande Messe des morts
  • Schumann: Requiem, Op. 148
  • Verdi: Messa da Requiem
  • Saint-Saëns: Messe de Requiem
  • Dvořák: Requiem, Op. 89
  • Fauré: Requiem, Op. 48
  • Delius: Requiem
  • Duruflé: Requiem, Op. 9, based almost exclusively on the chants from the Graduale Romanum
  • Britten: War Requiem, Op. 66, which incorporated poems by Wilfred Owen
  • Stravinsky: Requiem Canticles
  • Penderecki: Polish Requiem
  • Lloyd Webber: Requiem
  • Rutter: Requiem, includes Psalm 130, Psalm 23 and words from the Book of Common Prayer
  • Wilberg: Requiem

    Other composers

Renaissance