Requiem is the name given to the Catholic mass that takes place to ask for the soul of a person who has died. This ceremony is usually held before a funeral and at subsequent events to remember the deceased individual. The concept of requiem is also used to name the piece of music that accompanies the liturgical text of the ceremony in question. Although its performance is rare today, a large number of compositions are called requiem.
In Latin the text of the mass for the deceased was initially reserved for Gregorian chant, later it was treated by some polyphonic composers of the 16th century such as Roland de Lassus and Luis de Victoria, but in the 19th century it attracted the attention of composers such as Berlioz., Schumann, Liszt, Verdi, Fauré who use the form for concert work rather than for church, following the example of Mozart, whose Requiem (1791) is the starting point for a kind of great cantata or concertante mass in the It alternates arias and choruses, supported by a vigorous orchestra.
Requiem Masses suppress the Glory and the Creed and begin with the Introit, then the verse of a psalm, followed by the Kyrie and the Gradual, the Absolution, and the Dies irae sequence; follows the Offertory (Domine Jesus Christ, Sanctus and Benedictus), Agnus Dei and finally the Communion (Lux aeterna) but there may be variants of this structure as in the Requiem of war whose parts are: Requiem aeternam, Dies irae, Offertorium, Sanctus, Agnus dei, Set me free, interspersed with poems by Owen.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's requiem is one of the best known. The last composition of the Austrian musician, which he left incomplete and was finished by his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr according to his instructions. This requiem was released at the mass that was celebrated after the death of Mozart himself.
Robert Schumann, Antonio Salieri, Giuseppe Verdi, Johannes Brahms, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Igor Stravinski are other composers who have created requiems, often with the intention of performing them at the funerals of loved ones to honor their memory.
Other composers create choral works to commemorate the deceased with different texts, such as the German Requiem (instead of the Latin) by Brahms, from 1866 to 1869, with biblical texts, or the Requiem (1914-16) by Delius, with a text “. Pagan "by Nietzsche, compiled by the composer, and Britten War Requiem, 1961, which alternates texts from Missa pro Defunctis in Latin with poems by Wilfred Owen, died in 1918 just before the armistice that ended the First World War.
