Using Musical Elements of Requiems in Regular Worship?
Heron
Shipmate
I've recently found myself listening to a number of requiems - chiefly Faure, Mozart and ....er...Rutter...
Our Place does not have any requiems (part or whole) in the usual repertoire. It seems to me that around All Souls they might be suitably offered in worship.
Are there churches that do this?
Thanks
Heron
(The Sanctus in Rutter's Requiem suggests 'Star Trek' to me....I have wondered if his father - to whom the requiem is dedicated - was a fan)
Our Place does not have any requiems (part or whole) in the usual repertoire. It seems to me that around All Souls they might be suitably offered in worship.
Are there churches that do this?
Thanks
Heron
(The Sanctus in Rutter's Requiem suggests 'Star Trek' to me....I have wondered if his father - to whom the requiem is dedicated - was a fan)
Comments
More often than not, it’s a movement or two rather than whole thing. Many requiems were composed more as or are more suited as concert pieces rather than as true liturgical works; doing the whole thing can overwhelm the actual service, depending on which requiem it is.
I take @Nick Tamen point that requiems are not 'true liturgical works'.
I think that the texts and the music offer something not found elsewhere - but I also feel that way about the 'lost' Mattins canticles.
Perhaps putting our toe in the water with one movement during communion.
Cheers
Heron
My wife was in London and popped into Westminster Abbey for the Eucharist. It was All Souls and they did the Faure.
Yes and no. Something like the Mozart Requiem is more of a concert piece that wouldn’t really work liturgically, but I have heard, and sung, Faure and Durufle (for instance) as the main settings for a Requiem Mass, usually for All Souls or at a funeral.
But I’d class the Mozart, the Berlioz and the Verdi, for example, as concert pieces, and I’d lean toward that with the Lloyd Webber as well. And, while not a traditional requiem, I’d include the Brahms Deutsche Requiem in the concert category as well. (I have heard Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen/“How Lovely Are Thy Dwellings” at funerals.)
This Mass was arranged quickly just a few days after the death of Pope Francis and was celebrated in a cathedral which was filled to capacity
A few months before the cathedral had seen the funeral of a former Auxiliary Bishop Dr Andreas Laun. He had requested for his funeral the complete Mozart Requiem and so all of it was sung including the Dies Irae and the Offertorium. Salzburg cathedral lends itself to such events with the Cardinal Archbishop of Budapest as the preacher and a dozen other bishops present. The former Domkapellmeister came back to oversee the music and the present Domkapellmeisterin was there as Kantorin.
Although the Mass was celebrated in pre Vatican 2 black vestments it was a normal standard Roman Requiem Mass.( It can be seen on youtube Pontifikalrequiem fuer Weihbischof em. Dr Andreas Laun) but it lasts over two hours.
I have known churches which hold non-liturgical performances of requiems (especially Mozart's) on Holy Saturday as a kind of adjunct to the Easter Triduum.
If you're determined for a full ' classical ' requiem then it's astonishing how many composers have written one - Donizetti and von Suppé for example.
This is somewhat like the ' Concerts Spirituels' which took place in Paris in the C18th and revived in C19th during Holy Week and Eastertide. They were started precisely to allow 'grand' religious music to be performed in an extra- liturgical setting. These were intended as devotional exercises like gathering to say the rosary or do the stations of the cross, but with trumpets.
The same problems arise when using any choral settings of the Mass during the RC Mass. Let's all sit and listen while the choir sings the Gloria, for example, and lets wait while they sing the Sanctus or Agnus Dei. It disrupts the natural flow of the liturgy. I tend to avoid such services nowadays, despite having sung in choirs that were involved in them.
Last year for midnight mass we sang Haydn St Nicholas Mass setting, with it's 8 minute sanctus/benedictus. It was probably too long.
Would Byrd 4 S+B at just over 3 minutes also be too long? Perhaps not.
The shape and direction of the liturgy can certainly get lost with 'too much too long' choral music. Whatever that might mean in different places.
@Robertus L I lost my coffee at your idea of 'like the rosary...but with trumpets'
@Forthview ’s post reminds me that some years ago a friend lived in Vienna for a year and sang in the choir of one of their major RC churches. They would Mozart and Haydn masses as a matter of course, with small orchestra. I don’t know if that’s still happening.
It was billed as 'Gedenkgottesdienst '(Memorial Service) but was in fact a 'Totenmesse' (Mass for the dead) celebrated by the then retired Archbishop of Vienna,Cardinal Franz Koenig.
It was a superb piece of music by a superb composer,offered as a tribute to a superb conductor by superb musicians from the Vienna state Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic.
The colour is not so good as one would normally find today but it must have been one of the early Austrian TV transmissions in colour
(youtube Kardinal Koenig Herbert von Karajan Gedenkgottesdienst am 23.07.89)
While all sorts of music is used in Austria to accompany religious rites, it is fairly standard practice on major festivities to have orchestral Masses.
It would however be very rare to have such a Mass as the Requiem for Herbert von Karajan.