Instrumentation: SATB, Soprano and Baritone Soloists, & Orchestra
Purchase: Contact composer directly
Duration: 30:00 (5 movements)
Language: English
Story:  There are so many exquisite, beautiful, and moving Requiems in the repertoire that the task of composing a new one seems humbling-ly daunting at best and futile at worst. Indeed, setting the traditional Requiem text in Latin, which many composers have already done masterfully, seems downright impossible. I therefore settled on the idea of writing a
requiem on the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) using texts in English.  Each successive movement is tied to one of these stages and I tried to select texts that correspond to each emotion.

The first movement is a passacaglia - it strikes me that someone who is in denial has a tendency to tirelessly repeat the same ideas and thoughts, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, and the passacaglia form suits this idea.
The movement ends with a stammering homophonic statement of Dickinson's words "You...could...not."

The text of the second movement is excerpted from Shakespeare's play Macbeth. Macduff has just learned that his family has been slain by Macbeth's forces, and Malcolm advises him to channel his grief into rage. The baritone soloist plays the role of Macduff, while the chorus as Malcolm besieges him to use his anger. The soloist fights the urge, repeatedly singing "Heaven rest them now" while the chorus implores him to "enrage" his heart. He finally gives in, and the movement ends in a burst of anger.

The third movement sets the famed Edgar Allan Poe work A Dream Within A Dream. Bargaining in this context strikes me as continually finding new ways to ask the same question even though you already know the answer; thus the movement takes a minimalist approach, with ostinatos slowly morphing over time even though the eventual outcome is unchangeable: "O God, can I not save one from the pitiless wave?"

The a cappella fourth movement is composed around the idea of parallel fifths - almost every note moves in parallel fifths with another note. Writing parallel fifths is often lambasted as a mistake because it stifles harmonic motion -- what is depression but motion stifled? Repeated throughout the movement, Wordsworth's beautiful sentiment "A slumber did my spirit seal" serves as a unifying element.

The fifth movement combines two poems by Elizabeth Barret Browning and Robert Browning. Mrs. Browning's endearing poem was written after she met her husband, and recalls a time before they met: she "sat alone" even though he was out there somewhere in the world. I was particularly struck by the line, "When I think that thou wast in the world a year ago" and how it could be read two different ways - one looking back on a time before she met her husband (i.e. her intended meaning), and another as a widow remembering a time when her husband was still in the world.  The work finally finds joyous acceptance in the final line of Mr. Browning's poem: "All that was death grows life, grows love!"

The Requiem is scored for the same forces as Brahms' German Requiem, and can serve with it as an opening number on a concert program.