Requiem

The Requiem Mass (Totenmesse, Messe des Mortis, Messe des morts, or Missa pro defunctis), a mass honoring the dead, takes its name from the first Latin word of the Introit, which begins Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine (Grant them eternal rest, O Lord).

A musical setting of the requiem differs from the normal sung Mass in that it not only includes certain items of the ordinary mass and excludes others, but also includes the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion sentences from the Proper. The Gloria and Credo are omitted, and a Tract is substituted for the Alleluia. This is followed by the Sequence (Dies irae), which is often is a major dramatic element in the composition. Sometimes responses and other texts are added from the burial service, which usually follows directly after the Mass.

View the Wikipedia article on Requiem.

Settings by composers

Anonymous Gregorian chant (with harmonization) Ambrosian chant 18c? appended to a ms. of Valls SA & 2 violins Rafael Sales Arantes (Introitus only) SATB & organ Giovanni Matteo Asola TTBB Johann Georg Baumann Baritone & organ Hector Berlioz SATTBB & orchestra Heinrich Biber SSATB & 6-part strings Moritz Brosig in C SATB & orchestra Franz Bühler SATB & orchestra Manuel Cardoso SSATTB Eustache du Caurroy SATTB Claudio Casciolini (only Introit, in English) Marc-Antoine Charpentier Messe des morts à 4 voix, H. 7 De Profundis H 189 SATB.SSATB 5-part strings & 3 recorders Luigi Cherubini SATB & orchestra Jacobus Clemens non Papa a 4 Peter Cornelius TTBB (also arr. SATB) Adrian Cuello (in progress) SSATTB Johann Melchior Dreyer (in C) SAB & orchestra Carl Ludwig Drobisch Requiem No. 1 in D minor Requiem No. 2 in D minor Requiem No. 3 in E flat Major Caspar Ett in Es für TTBB in C-moll für SATB Gabriel Fauré w/o sequence & w/ elevation Pie Jesu SATB & orchestra Robert Führer Requiem 'im feierlichen Styl' op. 181 Requiem in C Requiem in F Einstimmige Requiem, Op. 290 José Mauricio Nunes Garcia 3 works Jean Gilles Only Lux aeterna arr. for solo bass available Zweites Requiem in C-moll, Op. 21 (Joseph Gruber) Paul van Gulick P. A. Halik V.V. Hausmann Michael Haydn (c minor)

Manfred Hößl Deutsches Requiem Deutsches Requiem in Es Requiem für kleine Chöre Benet Julià a 4 + bc. Johann Caspar Kerll Frans Joseph Krafft Pierre de la Rue ATTB Huub de Lange Franz Liszt TTBB & organ Duarte Lobo a 8, with 6-part Audivi vocem de caelo Claudio Macchi (opening verse only) Joseph Willibald Michl Requiem No. 1 Requiem No. 2 Cristóbal de Morales Missa pro defunctis à 4 Missa pro defunctis à 5 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart SATB & orchestra Johannes Ockeghem a 3/4 with tract Sicut cervus Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina a 5 (only offertory and ordinary set) Lorenzo Perosi (only Introitus available) Giuseppe Pitoni Marcos Portugal w/ orch. Ramiro Real a 4 Ignaz Reimann w/ orch. Camille Saint-Saëns Antonio Salieri SATB (soli & tutti) with orchestra Franz von Suppé w/ orch. Johann Baptist Vanhal, in E-flat SATB & orchestra Juan Vasquez a 4 with tract Sicut cervus Giuseppe Verdi Ludovico da Viadana a 5 Tomás Luis de Victoria Missa Pro defunctis à 4 Officium defunctorum à 6 Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse (fragment, with introit and part of Kyrie) TTBB

This list is updated by hand. A more complete list ordered alphabetically is available at Requiems

Other settings possibly not included in the manual list above

• Johann Kaspar Aiblinger — Requiem in d
• Georg Arnold — Missa II por defunctis
• Georg Arnold — Missa III pro defunctis
• Giovanni Matteo Asola — Missa pro defunctis, 1576
• Claudio Casciolini — Missa pro defunctis
• Maurizio Cazzati — Messa per li defonti
• Giovanni Carlo Maria Clari — Missa pro defunctis
• Jean Colin — Missa pro defunctis a 6
• Christoph Dalitz — Requiem aeternam
• Charles d’Helfer — Missa pro defunctis
• Caspar Ett — Missa pro defunctis ad 4 voces inaequales
• Carlotta Ferrari — Piccolo Requiem
• Johann Joseph Fux — Requiem in c, KV51
• François Giroust — Messa pro defunctis
• Óscar Manuel Paredes Grau — Requiem aeternam
• V. V. Hausmann — Requiem in Es
• Niccolò Jommelli — Missa defunctorum
• Josquin des Prez — De profundis a 5
• Benet Julià — Missa de difunts I
• Max Keller — 2. kurzes Requiem
• Johann Caspar Kerll — Missa pro defunctis
• Jens Klimek — Requiem
• Jens Klimek — Requiescat
• Juan de Lienas — Requiem a 5
• Antonio Lotti — Missa pro defunctis
• Allan Loucks — Requiem In D-Minor
• Allan Loucks — The Letters Finale
• Allan Loucks — The Letters Fugue
• Allan Loucks — The Letters Overture
• Giovanni Battista Martini — Requiem aeternam
• Jacques Mauduit — Requiem
• Juan Montes — Misa de difuntos
• Giovanni Maria Nanino — Gradual and Tract for a Requiem
• Sigismund Ritter von Neukomm — Requiem pour la Chapelle Royale de Dreux
• José Maurício Nunes Garcia — Funeral Office and Mass
• José Maurício Nunes Garcia — Requiem 1816
• José Maurício Nunes Garcia — Requiem Mass - 1809
• Paolo Pandolfo — Requiem
• Roger Petrich — Requiem Eternam
• Giuseppe Pitoni — Requiem aeternam
• Ildebrando Pizzetti — Messa di Requiem
• Oreste Ravanello — Missa Pro defunctis
• Joseph Renner — Requiem nr. 1
• Joseph Renner — Requiem Nr. 3
• Josef Rheinberger — Requiem, JWV 108
• Josef Rheinberger — Requiem, WoO 46
• Ambros Rieder — Requiem in d
• Martin Rudolph — Indian Requiem
• Luigi Antonio Sabbatini — Hostias et preces
• Anton Schmid — Requiem in d
• Giovanni Sgambati — Requiem
• David Joseph Stith — Missa pro defunctis
• Pietro Antonio Tamburini — Missa defunctorum
• Cesare Tudino — Requiem aeternam
• Pietro Yon — Missa et Absolutio pro Defunctis
• Vlad Zoborovski — Requiem

Text and translations

The sequence of liturgical movements established in 1570 by the Council of Trent is as follows:

• Introit: Requiem aeternam… Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion…
• Kyrie
• Gradual: Requiem aeternam… In memoria aeterna erit iustus… (Orlando di Lasso sets the Gradual text Si ambulem in medio umbrae mortis (Though I walk in the middle of the shadow of death)).
• Tract: Absolve, Domine (The Sarum rite calls for Sicut cervus, also used in Ockeghem's Requiem)
  • The Gradual and Tract are often omitted by composers, and it is not always clear that they then had to be chanted. The forward to the NMA Requiem notes with surprise the conjunction in an 1828 manual of church music: "After the epistle the gradual follows: Absolve Domine, or Dies irae" .
• Sequence: Dies irae
• Offertory Domine Jesu Christe - Hostias et preces
• Sanctus & Benedictus (sometimes an elevation motet such as Pie Jesu follows)
• Agnus Dei (miserere nobis is changed to dona eis requiem sempiternam)
• Communion Lux aeterna

Because the funeral mass does not end with the usual dismissal but leads into the burial service, many composers have appended texts from the Office of the Dead:

• Libera me (Exsequiae)
• In Paradisum (Valediction)

The famous Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria is actually part of a larger Office of the Dead (Officium defunctorum), as Victoria has supplemented the basic Requiem with a lesson from the service of Matins (Taedet animam meam), a funeral motet (Versa est in luctum), and the Responsory from the burial service (Libera me).

The Gloria and Credo, normally part of the Mass ordinary, are omitted from the requiem on the grounds that such overtly joyful texts would be out of place in a Mass for the dead.

Before the Tridentine reforms standardised the propers of the Requiem Mass, some composers used alternative texts for some movements, e.g. Orlando di Lasso sets the Gradual text Si ambulem in medio umbrae mortis (Though I walk in the middle of the shadow of death). While French composers had often set the Sequence (Dies irae) in its own right, Jean Gilles, Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Duruflé did not set it at all in their Requiems. Hector Berlioz reshuffled and slightly altered the lyrics of the Sequence.

• See also: Variant of the text set by Hector Berlioz

Second Vatican Council reforms

In 1970 substantive changes were introduced, most notably the omission of the sequence Dies irae (which is still permitted for some weekday masses before Advent). Alternatives were added in the Gregorian Missal:

• For the gradual: Convertere Domine, Laetatus sum, Si ambulem, or Unam petii.
  • The American Lectionary for the Mass suggests Psalms 23, 25 or 27 for the gradual psalm.
• The tract De profundis was added as an alternate to Absolve, but only permitted during Lent. Alleluias are to be chosen from: Requiem aeternam, De profundis, In exitu, and Laetatus sum.
• the Offertory verse Hostias is optional, and other offertories may be substituted: De profundis, Domine convertere, Illumina oculos & Si ambulavero.
• additional communions: Amen dico vobis quod uni, Domine quinque talenta, Dominus regit, Illumina faciem tuam, Notas mihi fecisti and Qui manducat.

Other stumbling blocks that arise from the use of old music with the Novus Ordo are the pauses for the spoken dialogues before the Kyrie and the communion antiphon; this has led to such abominations as letting the orchestra vamp on the last measures of Fauré's agnus during the Ecce agnus…Domine, non dignum dialogue.

External links

• Online guide to Requiem
• Requiem scores at IMSLP