Requiem mass
Also known as Requiem, Missa pro defunctis, Mass for the Dead
A requiem mass is the Catholic liturgical text for the dead, and when composers set it to music the result can feel both intimate and immense. In the best-known concert versions, voices, organ, and orchestra move between prayerful quiet and sudden drama, so the music can sound like a candlelit vigil one moment and a storm cloud the next.
Origins and context
Rooted in the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, with its musical repertory developed in European sacred and concert traditions.
The sound
Characteristics
- Choir
- Soloists
- Orchestra
- Organ
History
The requiem mass takes its name from the opening words of the Introit, "Requiem aeternam," and has long been used in the Roman Church for funeral services and memorial observances. Reference sources trace the musical setting of the Mass for the Dead back through the medieval and Renaissance periods, while later composers turned it into a major concert form. By the time of Mozart, Verdi, and Fauré, the requiem had become one of the central genres of the choral-orchestral repertory, with works often written for the stage-sized acoustics of the concert hall as much as for the church.
Notable artists
- WAWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- GVGiuseppe Verdi
- GFGabriel Fauré
