A Singer’s Guide to Requiems
What is it about requiems that attracted composers so much? The Catholic service for the souls of the recently departed seems, on the face of it, a difficult subject for great music, but, from the Renaissance onwards, this unlikely piece of liturgy has given rise to some of the greatest choral music ever written, from some of the finest classical composers.
The catalyst for this investigation was the performance on 14th June in the Usher Hall of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts, by the RSNO and its music director, Thomas Søndergård. I knew the work but had not heard it live before, and it blew me away. I acquired a recording the next week, and further listening got me thinking about the other composers who had been inspired by this apparently grim subject.
I’m not a fan of lists, but it might be helpful here to list the major players: Johannes Ockeghem (1461 or 1483), Pierre de la Rue (late 1400s), Tomás Luis de Victoria (1603), W A Mozart (1791), Hector Berlioz (1837), Johannes Brahms (1868), Giuseppe Verdi (1874), Antonín Dvořák (1890), Gabriel Fauré (1890), Maurice Duruflé (1947) and Benjamin Britten (1962). De la Rue and Duruflé are perhaps relative outriders, but I have included them to give a wider range of dates, and also because I like the music, and it’s my list!
The three Renaissance requiems are all austere in their polyphonic grandeur. Ockeghem’s is the earliest. The score survives in an incomplete form, lacking Sanctus, Communion and Agnus Dei, and it is not clear when it was written. It could have been composed for the funeral of King Charles VII in 1461, or for Louis XI in 1483, as Ockeghem was engaged as Maestro di Cappella at the French court in Paris. Although he appears to have been brought up in the Burgundian Netherlands, it seems that he was a French speaker, and gravitated to the French crown rather than the rival Burgundian court in Dijon. He represents the link between the more mediaeval style of Guillaume Dufay and the forward looking compositions of Josquin des Prez, and the Requiem is a fascinating piece, with movements of differing styles, linked by the Catholic liturgy. It is for two to four voices, and each movement uses a paraphrase technique for the original Sarum Chant. Ockeghem died in 1497, and his fame and influence were such that Josquin wrote his magnificent chanson, Nymphes des Bois (also known as La Déploration sur la mort de Johannes Ockeghem), a five part lament for his great predecessor, cleverly mimicking his contrapuntal style.
De la Rue’s Requiem is not quite in the same league but represents a good mid-point in the period style. Another interesting character, often referred to as Peter Vander Straten, he seems to have been first and foremost a tenor singer, appearing all over Europe as a much sought-after performer, serving for most of the second half of his career in the Grande Chapelle of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, he of the great portrait by Dürer. This must have given him financial security to allow him to compose, and he seems to have been very influential himself, but also to have taken on board many of the stylistic nuances of the composers he met on his travels with la Grande Chapelle, like Josquin and Heinrich Isaac. His latter years seem to have been spent in retirement in the Netherlands, and it was reported that the executors of his will found chests of money in his lodgings. He left funds after his death for requiem masses for his soul every day for a month, and a further 300 masses in various cathedrals in the Low Countries.
His setting of the Requiem Mass is very interesting, being really attentive to the words of the service for the souls of the departed, exploiting the lowest voices in the choir to an extent previously unheard. As a bass myself, I’m always alert to works which feature my voice range, but even I would be struggling to sing the very low notes in the Requiem. Like Rachmaninov’s Vespers, over 500 years later, the basses are taken down to low B flat, a sepulchral profundity rarely heard in polyphonic music. The whole requiem is scored for adult male voices, and sounds unlike any other work of the period, in my experience. Whether it was De la Rue’s career as a professional singer that gave him the scope to write more unusually for the individual voices, we do not know, but it’s certainly a talking point.
Tomás Luis de Victoria (c1548-1611) was the foremost Spanish composer of the late Renaissance period, spoken of at the same level as Palestrina and Lassus, and his Requiem Mass, written on the death of the Dowager Empress Maria in 1603, was the final work of his career, and in many ways, its culmination. Some years after the death of her husband, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, Maria withdrew to the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid and employed Victoria as her chaplain and chapel master. She was the sister of Philip II, daughter of Charles V, and had been regent of Spain before becoming Holy Roman Empress, and one of the most powerful figures in the world. This was the person that Victoria had to commemorate in music after her death and explains the major status of the work in musical history.
It’s interesting that he doesn’t seem to have composed anything after the Requiem. Maybe he was ill, or senile, or just reckoned he had achieved his life’s work. He published the work, amended and revised, in 1605, two years after the official obsequies, as the Officium Defunctorum, with a dedication to Margaret, Maria’s daughter, who was also a nun in the convent. As well as the Mass for the Dead, Victoria composed a motet (Versa est in luctum), a lesson for Matins, and the Absolution, to form the whole Officium Defunctorum, lasting approximately 40 minutes, and scored it mainly for six-part chorus, with the Cantus Firmus mostly in Soprano II. It is a deeply spiritual work, which makes a considerable impression on the listener, over 400 years later.
The famous story of the commissioning of a Requiem Mass from W A Mozart in 1791 will be for ever shrouded in mystery and intrigue, and needn’t detain us here, other than to congratulate the much maligned Franz Xaver Süssmayer for his brilliant completion of Mozart’s unfinished masterpiece. I have sung the Mozart Requiem perhaps more than any other work over the last 40 years, and it never ceases to give pleasure to the audience and satisfaction to the singers. It is simply perfection, and deeply moving. We shall never know exactly what Mozart intended, due to his untimely death at the age of 35, but somehow the apparently cobbled together version we know as the Requiem now, produced quickly after his death by his widow, using the completion by Süssmayer, has turned into a masterpiece. Like the even more remarkable B Minor Mass by Bach, which was never intended to be the integrated work of genius we perform now, expedience has led to some of the most remarkable music of all time becoming core repertoire and celebrated the world over!
Berlioz wrote his Grande Messe des Morts in 1837, originally to remember French soldiers who had died in the revolution of 1830, but subsequently to commemorate the fallen, including General Damrémont, at the Siege of Constantine in Algiers in October 1837. It was first heard at Les Invalides on December 5th of the same year and must have blown the minds of the listeners. Nothing remotely like this had ever been heard before, and it still makes an enormous impression, even now. Rows of 16 timpani, 4 brass bands at each point of the compass in the church and a chorus of hundreds reveal the unique majesty of Berlioz’s imagination. Bizarrely, much of the Requiem is very quiet and reverential, with an ethereal tenor solo in the Sanctus, and extraordinary aural combinations of flute and deep trombone at certain points. Love him or hate him, Berlioz was never predictable. I have been lucky enough to sing in many of his works, notably ‘Les Troyens’, ‘La Damnation de Faust’, ‘Benvenuto Cellini’ and ‘L’Enfance du Christ’, and each one has been an event!
Johannes Brahms wrote an altogether different Requiem in memory of his mother, who had died in 1865, over a period of years following her death. After a series of interim performances of the embryonic score, the final seven movement piece was first heard in Leipzig in February 1869, and like the Berlioz, must have taken the audience by surprise. This was not a Catholic Mass and was not written for liturgical performance. By its very title, it demonstrated its uniqueness. Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der Heiligen Schrift (A German Requiem, to Words of the Holy Scriptures), it had nothing to do with the Latin mass, and was less interested in the soul of the departed and much more to do with the comforting of those left behind. I have been singing the Requiem since I was a boy, firstly learning the treble chorus at school, and then the bass chorus part with the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union just before going to University. Later on, I graduated to singing the baritone solo in St Andrews and elsewhere. It is a work that I adore, ever since I heard it 50 years ago at the Usher Hall in the Edinburgh Festival conducted by Daniel Barenboim, with Edith Mathis and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as soloists and with the LPO and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. It was recorded for DG in George Watson’s College Great Hall, a recording well worth searching for.
There are so many magical moments in the Requiem - the sublime soprano solo movement (5), the ethereal fourth movement (How lovely are thy dwelling places), the terrifying crescendo and climax of the second movement, led by horns and timpani, the prophetic sixth movement (Behold, I tell you a Mystery) and the soothing final movement with the inspired tenor chorus top A just before the end. I was reminded of its place in the firmament by listening recently to the recording from 1947, in which a young Herbert von Karajan conducted the restored Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, a sadly depleted Viennese choir struggling to find singers after the ravages of the end of the war, the 32 year old Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and the 38 year old Hans Hotter. It is a miraculous recording, which somehow seems to find light at the end of the long and terrible tunnel of WWII. I have a deep personal connection, as I studied and worked closely with Schwarzkopf and Hotter in the 1980s. In addition, through Hotter, who knew Richard Strauss well, who knew Brahms well, I feel an affinity with the grand old man of German Romanticism. I studied, with Hans Hotter, Brahms’s Four Serious Songs, in Vienna and Munich, those magnificent late songs which complement the Requiem so beautifully, and I prize my score with Hotter’s signature at the top!
Giuseppe Verdi composed his wonderful Requiem in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, and the first performance took place in the Chiesa di San Marco in Milan in 1874. Manzoni, the great Italian poet, novelist, and philosopher had died the previous year aged 88, and Verdi wanted to write a suitably grand work to honour him. The premiere was repeated three days later at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, also conducted by the composer. I have written elsewhere in these Blogs about Verdi’s masterpiece, and I would encourage you to find my piece about it on EMR. Suffice to say that I reckon it is one of the greatest of all religious concert works, and it has brought me much pleasure over my long career singing the bass solos in many different venues throughout the world. If there was one piece in this repertoire which suited me best, it was the Verdi Requiem, with its heady mixture of great melodies and deeply moving vocal lines, perfectly suiting each voice category, and providing performers and listeners alike with a fabulous experience. From my first performance in the Royal Festival Hall in London with Dulwich School while still a student at Guildhall, to my last one in Chester Cathedral nearly forty years later, I still feel the tingle of excitement of those opening quiet chords and the anticipation of the mighty Dies Irae, with the ringing trumpets before Tuba Mirum!
Antonín Dvořák wrote a superb Requiem in 1890, first performed in Birmingham in 1891, conducted by the composer. I only sang this Requiem once in my career, but it remains an important work in the history of great requiems, and a major milestone in Dvořák’s career. Although it was composed for a commission and was not prompted by any particular feelings of grief or sorrow, it was nonetheless a work of great profundity and intellectual rigour. The composer was very proud of his work and enjoyed the success it achieved right from the beginning.
It is basically a two part composition with the first eight sections dealing with the drama of the Last Judgement, and the final five with solace and conciliation for those left behind. In this respect, it slightly resembles Brahms German Requiem, although the solo quartet is much more involved than Brahms’s two individual soloists. The interaction between soloists and chorus becomes more intense as the work progresses. I have sung Dvořák’s Biblical songs in recitals over the years, in Czech, and it is clear that he had a strong sense of the divine. These ten songs, dating from 1894 when he was living in New York, are settings of Psalms and are beautiful compositions. I particularly love his settings of the 23rd Psalm and of no 137, ‘By the Waters of Babylon.’
Around the same time as the Dvorak Requiem, 1890, the French composer, Gabriel Fauré, produced his masterful Requiem, a work entirely unlike those which had gone before. Actually the work went through several variations, with a five movement version performed in The Madeleine in Paris in 1888, followed by the seven movement score in 1893 in the same church. These versions were lightly scored, and throughout the 1890s, Fauré worked on a full orchestra version, which was eventually published in 1901, the year after the first performance of the finished piece. Since he was not famous as an orchestrator, there is a suspicion that the full version was possibly orchestrated to his specifications by others, but no one really knows.
What is clear is that Fauré was keen to write a contemplative work, and not a blockbuster in the Berlioz or Verdi mould. Most of the Dies Irae is omitted, and the final In Paradisum comes from the Catholic liturgy of the burial and not the funeral. There are occasional loud moments, when the brass section makes an appearance, but the general mood is of consolation and eternal rest. The original versions used boy sopranos, as the Madeleine did not employ female singers, and the tradition of a treble soloist in the Pie Jesu comes from this time. It appears that Fauré himself may have preferred a female singer, and various recordings allow us as listeners to hear both. I grew up listening to the recording with Victoria de los Angeles and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, conducted by André Cluytens in 1963, which is very beautiful, although Madame de los Angeles could never be mistaken for a boy soprano!
Maurice Duruflé produced his Requiem in 1947, and the influence of Fauré is clear. The Requiem was commissioned as part of a series of commissions by the collaborationist Vichy regime in France in 1941, but only premiered in 1947, long after Vichy collapsed. The composer insisted on payment, and received 30,000 Francs, three times the original fee! He had become a famous organist and had been titular organist at the church of St-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris since 1929. Around the same time as the Requiem, Marie-Madeleine Chevalier became his assistant at St Étienne, and the couple married in 1953, finding some renown as an organ duo in the 1960s and 70s!
The Requiem exists in three versions with varying amounts of orchestration, and is in nine movements, with smallish solos for mezzo-soprano and baritone. I only ever sang it on a tour to Norway with the Holst Singers of London, on an unusual contract. Several of our friends sang in the amateur but extremely fine Holst Singers, and they asked me to come on the tour with them, just to sing the baritone solo in the Requiem. Consequently, I enjoyed a most pleasant tour round the east coast of Norway, with free accommodation and travel, in the company of very jolly young people. What was not to like about that? They used the version with choir and organ, which was very effective, and I got to enjoy this lovely piece, clearly modelled on Fauré’s masterpiece, but with its own special sound world.
I’m going to end this short survey of requiems with the most recent, the magnificent War Requiem of Benjamin Britten, which was written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962. The 14th century church had been destroyed in a German bombing raid during WWII, and a new, modernist building had emerged, designed by Basil Spence, next to the ruins of the old.
Britten wrote a brilliantly original work, combining the Latin Requiem Mass with achingly evocative poems written during WWI by Wilfred Owen. It is scored for soprano, tenor and baritone soloists, chorus, boys’ choir, organ and two orchestras, and his plan was to have the soloists represent the main combatants of the European War (1939-45). The great Russian soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya, the English tenor, Peter Pears and the German baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Sadly, Cold War politics resulted in Vishnevskaya being prevented from travelling to Britain, and, for the premiere, the English soprano, Heather Harper sang the solo. Vishnevskaya was able to sing in the definitive Decca recording the following year, and so posterity is able to hear the work as intended. The gloriously impassioned singing of the Russian diva is absolutely what Britten wanted, and the result is a recording of enormous power and brilliance.
I was lucky enough to work closely in my younger days with both Peter and Galina, and so I feel I have a very close connection to this work. It would never have occurred to me that I might sing the baritone solo, as Fischer-Dieskau had a voice about a third higher than mine, but when I was asked by Chester Music Society Choir if I was interested, my voice coach, Tony Roden, and I took a look at the score, and decided that, with a bit of luck and a fair wind, I could get jolly close to it. Much of the writing had a Lieder-like intensity, and it suited my style of singing. Consequently, I was, unbelievably, able to sing this truly great work, and it became one of my greatest achievements. Britten has played a huge part in my career, firstly as a student at Aldeburgh in the Britten-Pears School over several summers, working with artists close to the composer, like Vishnevskaya, Pears, Thomas Hemsley, Bryan Drake, Nancy Evans, Eric Crozier, Imogen Holst, Rae Woodland and many others, and then in my professional career, singing frequently in Peter Grimes, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Beggar’s Opera, and occasionally in Albert Herring, the Rape of Lucretia, Billy Budd and the War Requiem.
The War Requiem is unique among requiems, as it was written as a requiem for all who had died in wars throughout the ages, and particularly those who were lost in the two 20th century world wars. The juxtaposition of the Latin mass with the poems of Wilfred Owen was an absolute masterstroke, and Britten’s idea of two orchestras, one a full symphony orchestra to play with the soprano soloist and the chorus, and the other a chamber orchestra, primarily to play with the tenor and baritone as they sing the poet’s words, is a brilliant concept, which works unbelievably well. At the end, in the melding of the poem, Strange Meeting, and In Paradisum, all the performers come together in a glorious and cathartic finale, resolving the piece in a beautiful Amen.
This also seems a fitting place to end my survey of requiems from the 15th century to the present day. I suppose the mystery of life and death has fascinated artists through the years, and the myriad musical possibilities afforded by both the horrors of Judgement Day, and the deep compassion and solace for the departed and their successors provided by the various scriptures, has permitted these great composers to add their special insights and imagination to the creation of such fabulous music.
All of this wonderful music is available to listen to at home. There are too many for me to make any full recommendation, but the Tallis Scholars have recorded most if not all of the earliest works, and I love the Giulini (Verdi) and Klemperer (Brahms) versions, and the Britten recording is definitive for the War Requiem.
Photo attribution: By Diliff - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34064313
