Which characterizes verdis requiem mass

A seminal literary work appeared in to fire the patriotic sentiments of Italian citizenry, then under Austrian rule. Written by the poet Alessandro Manzoni , I promessi sposi The Betrothed is closely tied to and identified with the Italian Risorgimento. Its subject matter was Spanish oppression of Lombardians in the early 17 th century. Manzoni's contemporaries had little trouble extrapolating from the novel's situation to apply its prescription for a free, independent Italy to their own circumstances.

The book sold remarkably well, prompting its author to revise it several times between and , when he published a definitive version. Nearly two centuries after its initial appearance, I promessi sposi remains the best-selling novel in the Italian language.

One of its most heartfelt admirers in the mid-nineteenth century was Giuseppe Verdi, whose own music had become a vehicle for Italian patriotism. Verdi's reverence for Manzoni bordered on hero-worship; he regarded the poet as the brightest star in the firmament of Italian artistic genius. When their mutual friend, Countess Clarina Maffei, arranged for the two men to meet in , the composer was awed.

To the Countess he wrote:. What can I say of Manzoni? How to describe the extraordinary, indefinable sensation the presence of that saint, as you call him, produced in me? Verdi was firmly established in his own career by this time, and had no need to feel inadequate in the presence of another great artist; however, he was by nature a modest man who was deeply moved by the honor the ageing Manzoni had thus accorded to him.

Manzoni died five years later, on 22 May Verdi was too grief-stricken to attend the funeral -- "I have not heart enough to be present," he wrote to his publisher Giulio Ricordi -- and sent another letter to Countess Maffei advising her:. I shall come soon to see his tomb, alone and without being seen, and perhaps after ulterior reflection, and after having weighed my forces to propose something to honor his memory.

He kept his word. Shortly thereafter he asked Ricordi to negotiate a proposal to the Mayor of Milan. Verdi would write a Requiem mass in Manzoni's honor, to be performed on the first anniversary of the poet's death.

The city of Milan would absorb the costs of rehearsal and performance; Verdi himself would pay for publication of the score and parts, and would retain rights to the work after the first performance.

Milan's Mayor agreed to the terms of the arrangement, and thus unfolded the circumstances of the work variously known as Messa da Requiem , Manzoni Requiem , or simply the Verdi Requiem. Another death, another tribute, and the genesis of a masterpiece. As is so frequently the case with large works like this, the full story of composition is rather more complicated. When Gioachino Rossini died in , Verdi suggested that a group of leading Italian composers collaborate in a composite Requiem to honor Rossini.

Verdi's segment of the traditional Latin text was the Libera me. The group effort was eventually abandoned, but Verdi retained the music he had written for the abortive project.

That movement, which dates from , was the launching pad for his own Requiem. The concept of starting point is important. Verdi was familiar with Requiems composed by Mozart , Cherubini one in and a second in and Berlioz ; he was also an admirer of Rossini's Stabat Mater , revised , to which he took a conscious bow in the version of the Libera me. Between Manzoni's death and the premiere of the Requiem in Milan on 22 May, , Verdi revised the Libera me extensively.

Only his introductory recitative and closing fugue bear a recognizable resemblance the original Rossini memorial. Verdi's Requiem consists of seven movements, of which the Libera me is last. Thus in a sense he started from the end. But there is considerable evidence to support the theory that as much as two-thirds of the Requiem was already drafted when Manzoni died.

Verdi must have known that his hero could not live forever; Manzoni was already 83 when the two met. The speed with which Verdi acted on the heels of his letter to Countess Maffei quoted above suggests that he had been thinking in terms of a tribute to Manzoni for a while. Inevitably as he drafted segments, the scope of the Requiem grew to operatic proportions. The Dies Irae is the longest movement in the Requiem and its dramatic crux.

At about 37 minutes, it constitutes approximately one-half the work's entire duration. Verdi's music encompasses a sufficient variety of emotions, text segments and scoring variations to make it roughly comparable to an operatic act. He suffuses the Dies Irae with vivid, unabashed theatricality that has an analogous impact to Michelangelo's Last Judgment frescoes.

Indeed, the touchy issue of whether the Requiem is too dramatic -- "an opera in church vestments" -- has dogged this work since its premiere. Rome's conservative stance notwithstanding, the Requiem was an immediate success and has remained immensely popular, for a host of good reasons. To begin with, the music is absolutely beautiful: melodious, dramatic, well-crafted. Second, Verdi achieved in the Requiem the mastery of orchestration that characterizes all his final operatic masterpieces.

Who would expect Verdi, as opposed to Wagner, to write such power into the brass parts in both the Dies Irae and in the Sanctus? His sense of instrumental power works with his singers, rather than against them, and also with his text to deliver a forceful and convincing musical message. This is true for soloists and chorus. Both are given chances to shine unsupported by the orchestra, as in the a cappella "Te decet hymnus" choral segment of the opening movement, and the lovely octave unison duet for soprano and mezzo that begins the Agnus Dei.

Years of working with librettists had honed Verdi's instinctive sense of inherent drama in the sung word. As so many writers have observed, in the Requiem text he had a powerful libretto indeed. Perhaps the most important factor of all in assessing the Requiem's artistic appeal and popular staying power and is that Verdi understood -- as had Brahms a scant half-dozen years before him -- that those who need comfort from a Requiem are the living. The message of his music is firmly grounded in the here and now, as opposed to the hereafter.

True, the terror of the Dies irae and its four thunderclap chords recurs, reminding us periodically of the day of judgment. But Verdi mitigates that stress with passages of soaring, transcendental beauty and exquisite tranquility.

Charles Osborne sums it up thus:. Verdi brought his dramatist's art to the Requiem. He had many times in his operas written death scenes, and music in which death is contemplated by one or more of the characters. In the Requiem, he was free to reveal something of his own attitude to death; and, predictably, gentle resignation and joyful anticipation of an afterlife were no part of his thoughts. Verdi's Requiem mass is not for the dead but for the living.

The intensity and the compassion of his tragic view of the human condition are Shakespearean in stature; the prodigality of his technique deserves. Just as Manzoni's book I promessi sposi succeeded because it spoke to the Italian condition, so does Verdi's Requiem address with piercing accuracy the very soul of the people and country he loved above all else.

Verdi scored the Requiem for three flutes third doubling piccolo , two oboes, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, timpani, bass drum, quartet [soprano, contralto, tenor and bass] of vocal soloists, mixed chorus and strings. The ensuing major sections comprise an Offeratory in which the solo quartet sweetly but ardently asks for deliverance, a swift and giddy Sanctus in which the choir is stereophonically divided to trade leaping phrases of unabashed joyous praise, and a shimmering a capella prayer for eternal rest featuring the soprano and mezzo soloists in tight parallel motion Agnus dei.

But then the respite is broken and the purity and affirmation of these longings are darkened in the Lux aeterna by an ominous challenge of deep brass figures and by increasing tension between orchestra and chorus, creating a division between text and presentation, highlighted by the soprano's attempts to soar toward the light, at first boosted by feathery flute and violin, but then weighted down by the rest of the instruments.

While Mozart, Cherubini and Berlioz had completed their requiems with the peaceful supplications of an Agnus dei or Lux aeterna , Verdi added a further section to conclude on a note not of consolation but discomfiting trepidation. Indeed, the Libera me not only serves as the culmination of the entire work but as its summation and emotional core, as if, having dutifully respected the traditional components of a requiem mass, Verdi at last steps out to have a final, deeply personal say.

While the movement mostly follows the version he had prepared for the Rossini mass, Verdi enhances the first portion of the Dies irae outburst with a more intense orchestral role, darkens the texture, and shifts emphasis from the universality of the chorus to the personal plea of the solo soprano.

The structure of his Libera me is one of disconcerting clashes of styles and a succession of moods that dispels any comfort the text might suggest. The tranquility is shattered by a reprise of the uproar of the Dies Irae outburst from the second movement, followed by a reflection of the Requiem aeterna that opened the work, but this time, rather than setting an initial reverential mood and reference point, it barely dispels the preceding turmoil; indeed, its temporizing aura of universal order is soon challenged by the soprano, this time embellishing the soothing choral lines with a reminder of the skeptical human dimension.

Then, after she turns fearful once again, there erupts a stern fugue, that most venerable, staid and intellectual of musical forms, suggesting a final effort to restore order and revert to historical precedent, but in this context it seems more an insistent demand than an appealing supplication. Soon, its universal abstraction, too, ultimately cedes to the increasingly desperate human quest of the lone soprano.

Indeed, it seems that Verdi, like Jesus, has humanized the relationship between mankind and deity concerning death, the one mystery of life that we all must confront regardless of social rank or religious outlook. After a final climax that utterly exhausts the chorus, the soprano offers a line of chant in a nearly conversational tone marked in the score "senza misura" — "without strict time" and then, as softly as possible marked " pppp " at the very bottom of her range middle C and utterly drained of feeling the score specifies " morendo " — "dying" with final breaths barely manages to growl two final pleas of " libera me " as if, having tried all the standard approaches to prayer, she is left stripped of any armor religion might provide to confront the worst fear of all for a culture steeped in faith — that at the very end of life's struggle there is no salvation at all but only eternal silence.

And so Verdi's Requiem ends in a gesture that's musically and philosophically both thoroughly modern in its theology and utterly devastating in its emotional impact. Even before its first performance, the Requiem met critical resistance. Hans von Bulow disparaged it as " oper im Kirchengewande " "opera in ecclesiastical dress" and others denounced its cheapening of religion with theatrical contrivances.

Critics ever since have debated the nature of the work. Its juxtaposition of solo voices and chorus, extreme sensitivity to the text, and outright drama have marked it as operatic, and indeed Verdi cast the two female solos with opera stars who had created the leads in his Aida four years earlier and rejected a tenor who wasn't spontaneous enough.

Yet, its counterpoint and repetition, avoidance of casting soloists as specific characters, and massive sonic structures suggest theatre, in the service of which Verdi demanded that the orchestra play with "verve and fire" and used choruses ranging from singers for the premiere to 1, on tour at London's Albert Hall.

All the while, its respectful treatment of the text is palpably religious — Eduard Hanslick quipped: "When a female singer appeals to Jesus, she shouldn't sound as if she were pining for her lover. But, as Robert Jacobson noted, these are needless distinctions — while Northern Europe tended to treat matters of faith with austere awe, Italy and Spain had a long tradition of bringing religion and drama under one roof — quite literally, as their resplendent Baroque churches fused art, architecture and ritual into a dazzling spectacle that overwhelmed worshippers.

As Verdi said, "The interiors of churches need not be dimly lit. Hanslick rebutted Bulow by noting that no music since Gregorian chant is "pure" and that Verdi was merely talking to God in his own language, reflecting the emotional range of the composer's own people. The premiere in San Marco was such a success that three more performances were held at Milan's legendary La Scala opera house, complete with an intermission after the Sequenz and numerous encores. Rather, Verdi wanted his work to complement Manzoni's own achievement as a proud emissary for displaying Italian culture to the world, and personally took it on tour to Paris, New York, London and Vienna.

In urging a retired opera star to participate in the premiere without pay, Verdi, in all humility, predicted that his Requiem would be "something that will make history, not because of the nature of the music, but because of the man to whom it is dedicated. As compiled by W. Busse's Verdi's Disco website, through January there have been recordings of the Verdi Requiem. In sorting through them, a key gauge is that of timing. Noting that Verdi conducted with limited elasticity and adhered to a basic tempo, David Rosen estimated an appropriate pace by calculating the duration of each section based on its length and Verdi's metronome markings, and came up with a total timing of about 70 minutes.

Yet that may be of purely academic interest. Arturo Toscanini recalled that when preparing Verdi's final work, the Te Deum , for its Italian premiere, the composer approved his instinctive slowing down at one spot, even though there was no direction to do so in the score.

Verdi explained that had he so notated the effect, conductors would be apt to exaggerate, while true musicians would feel it naturally and play it properly. Verdi knew his conductors well. A touchstone is at measure 44 of the Dies irae — although Verdi marked the final notes of a descending bass line as stent. Indeed, despite Verdi's express tempo indications, Toscanini's own three recorded performances range from 77 to 88 minutes.

The German score specifies a timing of 97 minutes but cites no authority and so could just be an editor's whim. Thus, any notion of an authentic pacing is illusory. Of the many notable recordings, I especially enjoy the following listed by conductor, ensemble, year, length and current CD availability :.

For further reading, I found two books especially helpful. David Rosen's monograph, Verdi's Requiem Cambridge University, , covers the subject with lots of background information and an analysis of each section that, while detailed, avoids becoming mired in hyper-technical jargon or musicological detail that would elude all but the most thoroughly trained professionals. For a note about the illustrations, please click here. All rights reserved.

Guiseppi Verdi — The conclusion in Verdi's autograph. Verdi conducting his Requiem in Milan — an orchestra of frenzied skeletons!