What is a Requiem?

As we get ready for our staging of Mozart’s Requiem in collaboration with Phoenix Dance Theatre, here’s a look at what a Requiem is, and how it has developed…

A Requiem is a Catholic mass for the dead, originally intended for funeral services. The name comes from the first line: ‘Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine’ — ‘Grant them eternal rest, Lord’.

However, the Requiem Mass has inspired many musical compositions over the centuries — over 2,000 to the present day! From the 18^th Century onwards, various composers were inspired to score their versions for choral and orchestral forces so massive — some practically operatic — that they couldn’t possibly be performed as part of a normal funeral. These became concert works, and the ‘Requiem’ evolved into a genre all of its own.

Texts often included are:

Introit
Kyrie eleison
Dies Irae
Offertory
Sanctus
Agnus Dei
Communion
Pie Jesu
Libera Me
In paradisum

Not all composers chose to set every part of the Catholic liturgy to music, some used other text as well or instead, and as time went on, other musical works treating death or mourning without any religious links at all also became known as a ‘Requiem’.

What they all do is immortalise a composer’s ideas about passing and what comes afterwards for both the dead and the living — while leaving us with some of the most famous, most dramatic and most ethereally beautiful moments in all of Western classical music! Here are some extracts from notable Requiems that you might recognise…

In something of a contradiction, Brahms’ Requiem is a non-Catholic work. Instead of the Latin text, he set passages from the Lutheran Bible (in German) to music. The piece focusses on comforting the living, rather than on the dead, and Brahms said that he would gladly have called it a ‘human Requiem’.

Today, the piece is a pillar of choral music. The best-known passage is the lilting ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’ (‘How lovely are thy dwellings’).

Britten’s Requiem is intended as a mass for all those who lost their lives in WW1 and WW2. Britten himself was a pacifist and influenced by this, he included settings of poetry by Wilfred Owen (who wrote and was killed during WW1) alongside the traditional Latin texts, in a harrowing commentary on the horrors of warfare. This makes the piece almost like a song-cycle within a ritual mass.

Today, it is often performed as a concert work and it took centre stage during the WW1 centenary in 2018. Here’s the ‘Dies Irae‘ — listen out for the brass fanfare which imitates gunfire.

Mozart’s Requiem will be performed in a double bill with a new composition by Neo Muyanga After Tears: After a Requiem, in collaboration with Phoenix Dance Theatre, Jazzart Dance Theatre and Cape Town Opera. Both works are choreographed by Dean Hurst.

Requiem runs at Leeds Grand Theatre from Friday 26 May until Sunday 4 June. The production is being performed as part of LEEDS 2023 Year of Culture with generous support from The Linbury Trust. 

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