Thanks to an inspired idea by David Hill, musical director of the Bach Choir of London (which is currently celebrating its 150th season), the Choral Arts Ensemble is excited to present Verdi’s powerful Requiem as few have ever heard it. In 2020, Hill commissioned English composer Richard Blackford (b. 1954) to create a new setting of the Requiem for organ, two pianos, and percussion, rather than a huge orchestra, allowing smaller ensembles to perform it in more intimate venues. Blackford has composed across many genres, including concertos, choral works, music for film and television, a musical, King (lyrics by Maya Angelou), and The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony, which combines recordings of animals and the natural world with musical instruments. He welcomed the challenge of maintaining the richness of Verdi’s original orchestration with a much smaller ensemble. He found that he could use the different registers of the organ to recreate the sound of orchestral woodwinds and brass, while overlapping piano tremolos evoked murmurings in the strings. While operatic-style performances with full orchestra can offer an overwhelming experience, Blackford’s slimmed-down orchestration centers both the solo and choral singing, revealing subtleties we had never noticed, or even heard, before.
The word “requiem” comes from the opening words of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead: “Requiem eternam dona eis” (Grant them eternal rest). Most requiems modify the basic structure of the Mass to reflect its purpose of coming to terms with death. Unlike the Ordinary of the Mass, whether sung or celebrated in church, a requiem omits the Gloria and Credo. Instead, it includes a depiction of the Day of Judgment (Dies Irae) and an Offertory that offers prayers pleading for God’s mercy through Jesus Christ. Most requiem masses conclude with the Agnus Dei, with prayers for eternal rest, but an additional prayer, Libera me (Deliver me), which is usually said at the burial, not in church, appears in many musical settings as well.
Best known for his operas, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) came to compose his requiem by a circuitous route. When Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868), one of the most popular Italian operatic composers of the early 19th century, died, Verdi suggested that his music publisher mark the first anniversary of Rossini’s death by commissioning a requiem, with each movement to be composed by a different Italian composer. Verdi himself submitted a setting of Libera me; a committee then assigned the other movements to twelve different composers. Though the work was completed in time, arrangements for performing it fell apart; in fact, it had its rather disappointing premiere only in 1988! In the meantime, Verdi went on to other projects, most notably his opera Aida (1871), composed to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal.
But when one of Verdi’s idols, Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) died, Verdi decided to write a requiem to mark the first anniversary of Manzoni death, and this time Verdi would compose it alone. Manzoni had towered over Italian literature as a poet, playwright, and novelist. His monumental historical novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed; 1827) is considered a masterpiece of world literature on a par with War and Peace. Not only had Verdi admired the novel his whole adult life, but he also revered Manzoni as a fellow passionate proponent of Italian reunification (Risorgimento), a dream finally achieved in 1861. Verdi approached composing his tribute much as he did his operas, taking full advantage of dramatic moments (especially in the Dies Irae), rich orchestral colors, and challenging music for the principal soloists, three of whom had recently performed in Aida.
Composers of requiems all address questions of how we deal with loss and grief, but they focus on different aspects. The Brahms Requiem does not use the form of the Mass at all, instead setting passages from the Old and New Testaments to offer comfort to those left behind. The requiems by French composers Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Duruflé both omit the Dies Irae almost entirely but include In Paradisum (Into paradise), envisioning a soul set free after death. The Mozart and Berlioz requiems leave out the Libera me, though Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and the Fauré Requiem include it. But the Dies Irae, with its vivid depiction of the Day of Judgment, remains a key part of most requiems. Although it is based on a rhymed poem written no later than the 13th century and soon after incorporated into the Mass, the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s (Vatican II) actually removed much of this section from masses for the dead for its over-emphasis on God’s wrath rather than God’s grace and loving kindness.
Still, the words of the Dies Irae have inspired composers to write some of their most forceful and moving music. The keening and weeping in Mozart’s Lacrymosa embody the last stages of hopeless grief. The Tuba mirum in the Berlioz Requiem calls for four brass ensembles, not just a single trumpet; three dozen brass instruments surround the chorus, sometimes making singers feel literally lifted into the air by sound waves. Verdi’s Dies Irae begins with powerful blows on an unpitched bass drum, followed by chromatic lines in the voices and strings spinning downward, depicting humanity’s terrified wailing in the firestorm that ends the world. In fact, the Dies Irae takes up nearly half the total length of the Verdi Requiem. One by one, the soloists present the trumpet that announces the Last Judgment, the vision of all the dead from the beginning of time rising from their graves, the Judge in his terrible majesty reading out all human deeds, and humanity suddenly recognizing its abject unworthiness—trembling, moaning, and pleading for God’s mercy—only to be repeatedly interrupted by the opening notes of terror. The movement ends with tearful acceptance of God’s judgment and a humble longing for rest.
The Libera me seems to have held special importance for Verdi. When he proposed the idea of a requiem for Rossini to his publisher, to be written by several composers, he had already claimed it as the final movement and written it himself. When he decided to honor Manzoni instead, he re-used what he had written with minimal revisions. Like the Sanctus for double choir earlier in the mass, his Libera me includes a complex fugue, beginning with the alto section, a cappella. Without accompaniment, each entering section seems unprotected in the face of divine judgment before they join together with the instruments. Moreover, his setting of the prayer emphasizes something different from what one might expect in a requiem. Even as the text of the prayer seeks deliverance from God’s wrath, Verdi chose, with the mysterious logic of a fever dream, to repeat the frightening opening portion of the Dies Irae. And, while the prayer usually ends with the opening words of the requiem, asking for eternal rest and perpetual light for the dead, Verdi at last brings the prayer—and maybe the whole requiem—back to an urgent whisper: Deliver me.
Some critics, then and now, have considered his requiem fundamentally an “opera in ecclesiastical dress” and hardly a religious work at all. Verdi usually did use music to enhance dramas, rather than to express religious faith, toward which he had an ambivalent attitude. He had begun as a church musician, serving as a boy chorister and church organist from age eight, but as an adult he rarely attended Mass, not even at the chapel he built. His wife called him a religious skeptic. Depictions of religion in his operas range from the terrifying cruelty and rage of the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo to Desdemona’s poignant Ave Maria in Otello. The latter may offer insight into Verdi’s understanding of faith. He chose to add the prayer, which does not exist in Shakespeare’s play, except that his Desdemona sings it in Italian, not Latin, and she interpolates her own desperate pleas among the familiar words—a deeply personal statement, not a rote recitation. Did the traditional structure of a requiem offer a place for Verdi to confront, if not resolve, the contradictions of his own faith? Verdi’s requiem remains turbulent to the end, and yet he concluded his composing life with the serene Four Sacred Pieces. So, is his requiem a work of sacred music? Listeners will have to decide for themselves.
Susan Wladaver-Morgan