Messa da Requiem

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The Messa da Requiem (also “Verdi Requiem”) is the setting of the text of the funeral mass ( Requiem ) by the composer Giuseppe Verdi from 1874 .

Emergence

Impressed by the death of Gioachino Rossini in 1868, Giuseppe Verdi invited the twelve most important Italian composers of the time to compose a mass for the dead , the so-called Messa per Rossini . He himself took over the setting of the final movement, the "Libera me" , in this Requiem . The premiere was to take place on the first anniversary of Rossini's death, November 13, 1869, in Bologna. The Messa per Rossini was completed in September 1869, but a performance did not take place due to adverse circumstances. The manuscript was then initially forgotten.

Verdi dealt with the requiem material again after the poet Alessandro Manzoni died in 1873 . Verdi had deeply revered the highly respected Manzoni, the identification figure of the Risorgimento - the Italian national movement, of which Verdi himself was a representative (cf. Viva Verdi ). He offered the city of Milan the composition of a mass to be performed a year after Manzoni's death. The city gratefully accepted. After Verdi had achieved a groundbreaking success in 1871 with the opera Aida , which finally helped him gain recognition in Germany, Verdi composed the Messa da Requiem as his last work for the time being.

Up to this point in time, Verdi had only produced church music during his first years of training, which were then thirty years ago, and in the aforementioned partial composition of the Messa per Rossini . Allegedly, while composing the Messa da Requiem in Paris, he studied the requies by Mozart , Cherubini , Berlioz and other composers.

Verdi's contribution to the Messa per Rossini , the concluding “Libera me”, now became the nucleus for the entire Requiem. Verdi kept it in a slightly different form as the final movement of the new composition. Verdi used the a cappella movement “Requiem aeternam” for solo soprano and choir from the funeral mass for Rossini in the new Requiem in the orchestral and choral movement of the “Requiem aeternam” in the Introitus . The setting of “Dies irae” from the older composition was used three times for passages of the sequence with the same or similar text . Verdi also made use of another of his own compositions, which served as a lament for Posa in the first French version of the opera Don Carlos , in “Lacrimosa”.

World premiere and further distribution

Title page of the first edition from 1874

As planned, the premiere took place on the first anniversary of Manzoni's death, May 22, 1874, in the Church of San Marco in Milan. The original title addition "Per l'anniversario della morte di Alessandro Manzoni XXII Maggio MDCCCLXXIV" (see illustration on the right) defines this performance as the actual work definition. In the same year, however, Verdi performed the work in Paris and in 1875 also brought it to London and Vienna . The first performances in the German Reich took place in Cologne and Munich in December 1875 , followed shortly afterwards by Schuch's first performance in the Dresden Semperoper .

Because of the dedicatee, Verdi's Messa da Requiem was once called the Manzoni Requiem . The term was mainly used in Germany in the years after the first performances, but was no longer used in the 20th century. In colloquial terms, the term Verdi Requiem is used today , while the original title Messa da Requiem is often used for concert announcements .

Verdi's Messa da Requiem , like Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts and Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem , is a requiem that was no longer written for liturgical use but only for concert performances; hence it is often ironically referred to as Verdi's best opera .

Work structure

Second performance of the Messa da Requiem at La Scala on May 25, 1874, with Verdi as conductor. Soloists, from left to right: Ormondo Maini, Giuseppe Capponi, Maria Waldmann and Teresa Stolz .

The text and the schedule of the work correspond almost entirely to the Roman Catholic liturgy of the funeral service. The deviations are marginal: Verdi merely dispensed with setting the graduals and tracts to music , but added the responsory Libera me . The line-up, on the other hand, corresponds to an opera orchestra (with great agreement with Don Carlos ) with four soloists ( soprano , mezzo-soprano , tenor , bass ) and a choir (four-part, often divided voices, in the Sanctus double choir, i.e. two four-part choirs).

  1. Introit : Requiem aeternam - Te decet hymnus - Kyrie (solos, choir)
  2. Sequence (" Dies irae "):
    1. Dies irae - Quantus tremor (chorus)
    2. Tuba mirum - Mors stupebit (Bb, choir)
    3. Liber scriptus - Dies irae (2nd) (M, chorus)
    4. Quid sum miser (S, M, T)
    5. Rex tremendae - Salva me (S, M, T, B, chorus)
    6. Recordare - Quaerens me - Juste Judex (S, M)
    7. Ingemisco - Qui Mariam - Preces meae - Inter oves (T)
    8. Confutatis - Oro supplex - Dies irae (3rd) (Bb, chorus)
    9. Lacrymosa - Pie Jesu (solos, choir)
  3. Offertory : Domine Jesu - Hostias - Quam olim Abrahae (solos)
  4. Sanctus (double choir)
  5. Agnus Dei (S, M, choir)
  6. Communio : Lux aeterna (M, T, B)
  7. Responsory : Libera me - Dies irae (4th) - Libera me (S, chorus)

Abbreviations: S - soprano , M - mezzo-soprano , T - tenor , B - bass

The performance of the Messa da Requiem is 85 minutes.

Orchestral line-up

3 flutes (3rd also Piccolo ), 2 oboe , 2 clarinets , 4 Fagotte , 4 horns , 8 trumpets (including 4 remote trumpets in tuba mirum ), 3 valve tenor trombone , 1 Ophicleide (today often Cimbasso replaced), drums , bass drum, and Strings.

In terms of instrumentation, the solo use of the bass drum in the dies irae is particularly noteworthy, so that two different instruments are often used here for different passages. The offertory includes an audition point for cello.

Editorial peculiarities

The opening bars of the original "Liber scriptus"

After the first performances, the work underwent a minor revision: In 1875 Verdi decided to replace the “Liber scriptus”, which until then consisted of a chorus fugato, with a mezzo-soprano aria. Only in the first edition from 1874 (published by Ricordi ) is the piece still preserved in its original version.

Edits

The Berlin choir director and music teacher Michael Betzner-Brandt created a version for a small ensemble in 2013.

Use in other media

Dies irae has been used in various films to increase tension. This includes the two films in the Japanese Battle Royale series and the American western Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino from 2012.

literature

  • Michael Heinemann : Patriotic Church Music. Verdi's Requiem and the German Criticism. In: Musica Sacra , No. 3 / vol. 121 (2001), pp. 6-8.
  • Günther Massenkeil : The Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi. A sacred masterpiece. In: Musica Sacra , No. 5 / vol. 121 (2001), pp. 8-10.
  • David Baruch Rosen: Verdi: Requiem. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995.
  • Uwe Schweikert: Messa da Requiem. In: Anselm Gerhard ; Uwe Schweikert (Ed.): Verdi manual. Bärenreiter, Kassel and Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2001, pp. 496–504.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fritz Stein (ed.): Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem. For 4 solo voices, chorus and orchestra (pocket score). Eulenburg, London 2000, ISBN 978-3-7957-6918-5
  2. ^ Horst Huber: Timpani and percussion in the works of Giuseppe Verdi . 2002, ISBN 3-8311-3654-8 , pp. 38 .
  3. ^ Messa da Requiem at Carus-Verlag