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.

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Settings by composers

Rafael Sales Arantes (only Introitus available) Giovanni Matteo Asola Hector Berlioz Heinrich Biber Requiem ex F con terza minore (in F minor) (only Introitus and Sequentia available) Claudio Casciolini (only Introitus available) Chant Gregorian Chant arr. by Abel Di Marco Ambrosian chant Marc-Antoine Charpentier Luigi Cherubini Peter Cornelius Adrian Cuello Carl Ludwig Drobisch Requiem No. 1 in D minor Requiem No. 2 in D minor Requiem No. 3 in E♭ Major Caspar Ett Gabriel Fauré Robert Führer Requiem 'im feierlichen Styl' op. 181 Requiem in C Requiem in F Einstimmige Requiem, Op. 290 José Mauricio Nunes Garcia Joseph Gruber Paul van Gulick P. A. Halik V.V. Hausmann

Michael Haydn Manfred Hößl Deutsches Requiem Requiem für kleine Chöre Benet Julià Frans Joseph Krafft Huub de Lange Duarte Lobo Claudio Macchi 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 Johannes Ockeghem Lorenzo Perosi (only Introitus available) Marcos Portugal Ramiro Real Ignaz Reimann Camille Saint-Saëns Joseph G. Stephens Franz von Suppé Juan Vasquez Giuseppe Verdi Tomás Luis de Victoria Missa Pro defunctis à 4 Officium defunctorum à 6

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Original texts 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 rightTemplate:Fact, Jean Giles, 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 facim tuam, Notas mihi facisti 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