Requiem

The Requiem mass (Totenmesse, Messe des Mortis, Messe des morts, or Missa pro defunctis), a mass honoring the dead, takes its name from the first Latin word of the Introit, which begins Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine (Grant them eternal rest, O Lord).

A musical setting of the requiem differs from the normal sung mass in that it not only includes certain items of the ordinary mass and excludes others, but also includes the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, and Communion sentences from the Proper. A Tract, followed by the Sequence Dies iræ, is substituted for the Alleluia and often is a major dramatic element in the composition. Sometimes responses and other texts are added from the burial service, which usually follows directly after the mass.

Settings by composers

Rafael Sales Arantes Matteo Asola Hector Berlioz Claudio Casciolini (only Introitus available) Chant Gregorian Chant arr. by Abel Di Marco Ambrosian chant Luigi Cherubini Peter Cornelius Carl Ludwig Drobisch Requiem No. 1 in D minor Requiem No. 2 in D minor Requiem No. 3 in Eb Major Caspar Ett Gabriel Fauré Robert Führer Requiem 'im feierlichen Styl' op. 181 Requiem in C Requiem in F Einstimmige Requiem, Op. 290

José Mauricio Nunes Garcia (only Kyrie available) Joseph Gruber Manfred Hößl Frans J. Krafft Duarte Lobo Claudio Macchi Joseph Michel Requiem No. 1 Requiem No. 2 Cristobal de Morales Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Johannes Ockeghem Lorenzo Perosi (only Introitus available) Ramiro Real Ignaz Reimann Joseph G. Stephens Juan Vasquez Tomás Luis de Victoria Missa Pro defunctis a 4 Officium defunctorum a 6

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Original texts and translations

Different composers have set different parts of the Latin requiem mass. The liturgical movements are as follows:

• Requiem æternam (Introit; verse: Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion...)
• Kyrie eleison
• Requiem æternam (Gradual is often omitted; verse: In memoria æterna erit iustus...)
• Dies iræ (Sequence)
• Domine Jesu Christe (Offertory)
• Sanctus
• Benedictus
• Agnus Dei... dona eis requiem sempiternam
• Lux æterna luceat eis (Communion)

To which some composers have appended texts from the burial service:

• Libera me (Exsequiae)
• In paradisum (Valediction)

The Gloria and Credo, normally part of the mass ordinary, are omitted from the requiem on the grounds that such overtly joyful texts would be out of place in a mass for the dead.

Some composers have varied the form considerably: where previous French composers had often set the Dies iræ in its own right, Gabriel Fauré eschewed setting it in his Requiem, aside from excerpting the final couplet as a separate movement to follow the Sanctus, Pie Jesu, where it functions as a funeral motet.

The famous Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria is actually part of a larger Office of the Dead (Officium defunctorum), as Victoria has supplemented the basic Requiem with a lesson from the service of Matins, Tædet animam meam, a funeral motet Versa est in luctum, and the Responsory from the burial service, Libera me.

Before the Tridentine reforms standardised the propers of the requiem mass, some composers used alternative texts for some movements: e.g. Orlando di Lasso sets the Gradual text Si ambulem in medio umbræ mortis (Though I walk in the middle of the shadow of death).

• See also: Variant of the text set by Hector Berlioz