Another Ruddy Requiem

I remember my excitement several years ago when it was announced that Stewkley Singers would be performing Mozart’s Requiem for our spring concert. Not sure which year it was – it was pre-Covid so timing’s all a bit of a blur really. A Requiem is traditionally a ‘Mass for the Dead’ from the Medieval Church, with the usual prayers and exhortations (e.g., Kyrie Eleison; In Paradisum) to give comfort to departed souls. Come the actual concert, it was a wonderful, novel experience: the Sanctus uplifting and the Lacrimosa incredibly moving.

We’ve also sung Braham’s German Requiem. (Not a traditional Requiem: more like comfort for those left behind.) We sang it in English. Why would you do that? I mean, just one word says it all: “Augenblick!” (pronounced ow-gen-(hard g)-blick). This means, “moment!” (pronounced moh-ment). In the German version, shortly after the baritone thunders “Augenblick!” the choir comes in forcefully, having been kick-started off the blocks by the powerful word: wide vowels, hard consonants, ‘gutterality’. But ‘moment’? Soft consonants, closed vowels: no wonder our miracle-worker Music Director Jenny had trouble getting fire into our bellies. We’d been lulled into torpidity by mmm’s and oh’s.

We’ve also sung Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light. Again, not a traditional Requiem but, to be succinct, a Requiem-light, although not devoid of musical quality at all. Goodall shortened the traditional texts and included extracts from English verses spanning the centuries. He did this, because yer traditional Requiem, “emphasises judgement and everlasting damnation for anyone who transgresses the Roman Catholic Church’s code of behaviour, as seen from the perspective of the Middle Ages. I did not feel at ease with this approach to the appalling pain of loss and grief”. Did I say Requiem-light? My regular blog-readers would have expected me to use the phrase Requiem-woke, but we are talking God here, and I don’t want to be hit by a thunderbolt or be subject to “everlasting damnation” when my time comes. (Too late, I hear you cry.)

We started rehearsals for Haydn’s Nelson Mass in 2019 for our 2020 performance that was postponed because of Covid (until sorry I can’t remember again when it was actually performed). So not a Requiem Mass but still a Mass with lots of Kyrie-ing and Benedictus-ing.

Then last year was the glorious Dream of Gerontius (hard-g) by Elgar (another hard-g), officially not a Requiem Mass, but set to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It’s about the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory: in other words, judgement and comfort for a departing soul - a Requiem by any other name.

So when it was announced last summer (not ‘announced’ exactly; more like cryptic clues drip-fed from a sun lounger) that this time it would be Verdi’s Requiem, I said to myself, “Oh, dies irae!” It didn’t take me long, however, to get over my déjà-vu mindset. Very different again from any of the other Requiems I know. This one is truly operatic; after all, it is Verdi. We don’t sing the prayers, we whisper them, breathlessly, earnestly, and the Sanctus blows your socks off more than any Puccini showstopper. When the altos come in for our Supremes’ moment – we don’t get many of those, ever – Director Jenny exhorts us to hate her. I’ll just leave that comment hanging.

Mind you, Verdi giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other. In the dies-irae refrain, the tenors and basses go like the clappers, the first sopranos open their vocal cords for a four-bar top G, the second sops trip the light fantastic, and the second altos mirror the second sops but an octave lower. And the first altos? A four-bar G, not a top G, but a boring ‘middle G’. What did first altos ever do to annoy Verdi?

He makes amends with the Lacrimosa, however. Whereas Mozart’s is a cry from the heart in a minor key, Verdi’s could feel at home as a teasing love song in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

I don’t want to give away too many spoiler alerts, except to say that the Libera Me is such a frenetic tongue twister that we’ll be rivalling the French hornists in the orchestra for production of spittle. And they’re sitting in front of us!