Wait, what’s a Requiem?

The Requiem Mass is the Catholic Mass for the Dead that honors the souls of the departed. Over time, the Requiem became a big deal for composers, possibly even more than the standard Mass. My guess? The Requiem Sequence, best known as the Dies irae. Of course, it’s not the only thing in the sequence, which also includes all the other stuff. Lacrimosa? Sequence. Confutatis? Sequence. Tuba mirum? Still the sequence. (It’s a long-ass Catholic poem… 19 stanzas.)

Apart from that there’s also your standard parts of the Mass, which I guess are whatever on the religious end of things, but theatrical dynamite. And then some hack has already talked about the last part of the requiem, the In paradisum. Can’t even be bothered to fully orchestrate that movement, almost 4 years later. What a CLOWNFRAUD.

At this point the requiem still exists, but most requiems written by composers are far too large (personnel-wise and duration-wise) to be part of the Mass, ending up as their own concert works, similar to an oratorio. The average performed requiem is in the 75 minute range, with Verdi being closer to 90.

What’s an oratorio?

Like Handel’s Messiah. You know, the one with the Hallelujah? Not the Leonard Cohen one, the other one.

Okay, how are we ranking these?

If I’ve played them, or I’ve heard them, or I know them reasonably well, they’re on the list. So, without further ado to piss Classical musicians of all natures off, here is an extremely incomplete list of ranking Requiems.

Also the following requiems are not ranked because I don’t know them well enough:
-Ligeti
-Dvorak

1. Verdi Requiem
The fieriest, brimstoniest of the bunch, as that Dies irae is definitely the day of wrath. I have played this while being absolutely furious with someone close to me at the time, and yeah, once that movement hit, I was in the fucking zone. And honestly, 90 minutes of music, I might have missed, like, 5 notes.

I’m also a fan of the Libera me, which we used for a class project. But also it’s also a really good fugue, and then at the end of it my rage finally broke, and I looked at my best friend (the oft-mentioned cellist) and I spent a solid couple minutes crying on her shoulder as I was wobbly getting off the stage. So there’s points for sentimental reasons too. So yeah, Verdi wins, Verdi’s my favorite requiem.

2. Britten-War Requiem
You can feel the pain in this one, written in 1962 for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral after the original was destroyed in a bombing run. Interspersed with poems from Wilfred Owen, outlining a tritone throughout, there’s no real comfort throughout it until the very end.

3. Brahms-Ein deutsches Requiem (German Requiem)
Fun fact! The only one of these with no Latin, as the name literally translates to “A German Requiem.” Brahms wrote the libretto himself, using passages from the Luther Bible and purposefully omitting standard Christian dogma. It’s finely distilled Brahms, and Brahms has always been one of my favorite composers, so finally getting a chance to hear it, and to finally understand the references a conductor told me come back in the second movement of his Symphony No. 2, because I hadn’t actually heard it through. Once I did I immediately heard the symphony references (since I’ve played that twice, once as concertmaster).

4. Mozart Requiem
If we’re ranking single movements it’s a tossup between the Dies irae in the Verdi Requiem and the Lacrimosa in this one. And I adore the beginning (and will be inspired for my own Introit).

So, hot take alert, why do you have it FOURTH, Senor? And the reason is that there are movements that Mozart didn’t really get to at all. His student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, finished the Requiem, because as we all learned in Amadeus, Mozart died before he could complete it. The Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, and Communio weren’t in the fragments that we have of Mozart’s manuscripts, so those are likely all Süssmayr. And maybe it’s the repetitions between the Sanctus and Benedictus, or the Communio (officially in the same movement as the Agnus Dei) taking from the Introit, but it loses a bit of steam as a result. Still, well done by the pupil, but one of the great what-ifs in all of Classical music is “What would have happened had Mozart had another five years?” He was 35 when he died.

I’ll tell you it definitely would have bumped to top 2, no doubt.

5. Fauré Requiem
Gabriel Fauré’s requiem doesn’t have the fire of Verdi or Mozart. There isn’t even a labelled Dies irae movement, and that’s normally what the people come to see! But what it does have is sheer beauty in the Introit, Libera me, and In paradisum (which is where I got a great deal of my inspiration, and I’ve also taken a bit for my own Libera me, eventually). Or violins! (The original chamber version had no violins, that is correct.) As a result however, this requiem clocks in at about 35 minutes and ends up often getting played with another one of my favorite choral pieces, the Cantique de Jean Racine.

6. Berlioz Requiem (Grand Messe des Morts)
Out of the 6 mentioned, this is the only one I haven’t heard live or performed, so it’s just recordings. The big problem is that it’s a little… too big. There are stories about how at the premiere it nearly fell apart in the Tuba mirum due to the way the brass is staged at every corner, and it was only due to Berlioz rushing to the podium because the actual conductor was taking a pinch of snuff that they got through it. (Source) I’d love to hear it live as the brass swells up in that truly surround sound. And that’s the general vibe, more majesty of the brass than damnation. If that sounds like your vibe, then certainly go for it.

7. Duruflé Requiem
I don’t want to call it a poor man’s Fauré, but it’s got a similar vibe, being even more ethereal than Fauré’s Requiem 60 years prior while still paying homage. Duruflé had more work in the style of chant and was apparently working originally on Gregorian-style chants based on the requiem when he was commissioned to write this. I like French Romanticism for some reason—I can’t put my finger on why—but maybe at this point it gets a little too watercolor for my taste.

Okay, outside of music time, what’s on tonight?
Wednesday Night MACtion!
A Battle of Ohio (if not THE Battle of Ohio): Ohio vs. Toledo (7:00, ESPN2)

Iceball
Vichy Whalers vs. Moving to Camden with the Sixers? (CAR vs. PHI, 7:30, TNT)
Fightin’ Gaetzes vs. Mr. Ayo as Zeus (NSH vs. SEA, 10:00, TNT)

Woodball
Bulls on Parade vs. “Doc Rivers is North Korea incarnate” (CHI vs. MIL, 7:30, ESPN)
Wingy Hut Jr.’s vs. The Curse of the Based God Lil B (NYK vs. PHX, 10:00, ESPN)

JV Woodball
Siena inevitably losing by 30 to Xavier (in progress, FS1)
Getting dunked on by Patrick Chewing (Mt. St. Mary’s vs. Georgetown, 8:30, FS1)
Tweaker Peacock, or Tweacock! San Jose State inevitably losing by 25 to the Troy Boyz (10:00, Peacock)

And I will write up a rubric for an assignment over the holidays while listening to diceball playoffs, as the Nocturnes await their debut sometime next month!