Dies Irae: A Guide to Requiem Music

Since time immemorial, the response of the living to death has been commemorate the life of the departed through ceremonies and rituals. For nearly two millennia, the Christian quest for eternal peace has been expressed in a poetic musical structure known as the requiem.

Traditional requiem texts, among them the anonymous medieval Latin poem "Dies Irae" (Day of Wrath), have inspired an untold number of composers in different ages and serving different religions, Western and Eastern. This book, the first comprehensive survey of requiem music for nearly half a century, provides a great deal of diverse and detailed information that will be of use to the professional musician, the musical scholar, the choral conductor, the theologian and liturgist, and the general reader.

The bulk of the guide is a description of 250 requiems. Each entry includes a concise biography of the composer and a description of the composition, including details of voicing, orchestration, editions, and discography. An extensive bibliography lists dictionaries, encyclopedias, prayer books, monographs, and articles, and an appendix lists more than 1700 requiems not discussed within the main text.

CONTENIDO:

-Foreword, by Jahja Ling
-Acknowledgments
-Abbreviations
-Introduction
1. The Gregorian Requiem Mass
2. The Polyphonic Corsican Requiem
3. The Renaissance and the Franco-Flemish School
4. The High Renaissance
5. The Baroque Requiem
6. The Symphonic Requiem
7. Romanticism
8. The Twentieth Century
9. Dies Irae
10. Ein Deutsches Requiem: The German Requiem
11. The Anglican Requiem
12. The Byzantine-Greek Requiem
13. The Russian Orthodox Panikhida
14. The Serbian Orthodox Requiem: Opelo
15. The Armenian Orthodox Requiem
-Appendix A: Dies Irae Melodies
-Appendix B: More Liturgical Requiems
-Bibliography
-Composer Index
-About the Author