I first sang a setting of the Latin Requiem – Mozart’s – as a treble in my first year at Big School. A friend remembers me singing excerpts of the loud and exciting Dies irae in the lunch queue. Nearly forty years later, as Vivamus’ performance of Duruflé’s Requiem draws near, how have my feelings towards the Requiem Mass changed?
In these difficult times, it seems more foolish than ever to project one’s own meanings onto the Requiem without acknowledging others’ feelings and suffering. But in the space I have today, I cannot help but focus on how it’s the calmer and more meditative moments that really get to me now.
Seen by many as a reticent, self-critical, conservative and religiously devout composer, Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986) was a chorister at the Rouen Cathedral Choir School from 1912 to 1918. His exposure to the choral plainsong tradition at Rouen is perhaps reflected in his use in his Requiem (completed 1947) of numerous themes from the Gregorian Mass for the Dead, notably in the famous opening movements of the piece. I also find myself wondering about the debt owed to his birth in the town of Louviers on the River Eure as I listen to the opening, restrained bars of the Sanctus – the organ part sounds to me like the wind ruffling water.
However, it is the final movement, In paradisum, that stirs the deepest feelings in me. For me it carries suspense, relief, beauty, uncertainty and awe, all within the space of just thirty bars. And however one views the end of earthly life, as a writer commenting on my first recording of the Mozart once put it: perhaps one starts to see death, or the eternal rest that comes with it, as a friend. Though of course we grieve our losses, perhaps through music we can learn to lessen our fears.
If you’d like to hear Vivamus’ performance of the Duruflé Requiem – as well as works for choir, cello, organ or piano by Fauré, Villette and Widor – buy tickets for our spring concert on 19 April.
Post written by Kieran Morgan.