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Eucharist in Commemoration of the Dead
of the two World Wars and all subsequent conflicts:
The Requiem Mass - solemn liturgy sung in the Roman Catholic Church to honour the dead and to ask for rest for their immortal souls – has inspired composers to write some of their best music. The Mass was first set to music in the Gregorian plainsong Liber Usualis, but was quickly followed by forty-odd polyphonic settings from the sixteenth century with settings be Ockeghem, Lassus, Palestrina and Victoria. Perhaps the most well-know settings of the twentieth century are those by Duruflé, Ligeti, Fauré and Howells (although not set to the traditional text).
The Requiem by Gabriel Fauré was first performed after the death of his mother at her funeral which took place at La Madeleine on 16 January 1888. He had composed five of the movements (Introit and Kyrie, Sanctus, Pie Jesu, Agnus Dei and In Paradisum), but had not for this event. The Requiem on this webcast was not completed for performance until 1900, when it was again performed at La Madeleine. To the five existing movement he added the Libera me had been written twelve years earlier as an independent piece for baritone voice and organ, and composed the Offertoire (some of which he re-used in his ninth piano Prelude). In the twelve year period Fauré fleshed out the instrumentation to include brass, woodwind and upper strings (the original scoring consisted of only violas, cellos and double basses).
