GIUSEPPI VERDI WROTE THIS MONUMENTAL REQUIEM MASS IN HONOR OF ITALIAN POET - NOVELIST ALESSANDRO MANZONI, WHOM HE MUCH ADMIRED, WHO DIED IN 1873. PERFORMED MY SOPH. YR. IN THE TEXAS ALL STATE SYMPHONIC BAND. WRITTEN IN 1874, ARR. BY EMIL MOLLENHAUER.
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Story behind the song
This is performed by the TMEA Texas All State Symphonic Band at the TMEA Convention-Clinic-Concert, my first year in the band. I played the B-flat clarinet.
The Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi is a musical setting of the Roman Catholic funeral Mass. It was first performed on 22 May 1874 to mark the first anniversary of the death of Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian poet and novelist much admired by Verdi. The piece is also sometimes referred to as the Manzoni Requiem. A typical performance takes around 85 to 90 minutes.
When Gioachino Rossini died in 1868, Verdi suggested that a number of Italian composers should collaborate on a Requiem in Rossini's honor, and began the effort by submitting a "Libera me." During the next year a Messa per Rossini was compiled by 13 composers (of whom the only one well known today is Verdi himself). The premiere was scheduled for 13 November 1869, the first anniversary of Rossini's death.
However, on 4 November, nine days before the premiere, the organizing committee abandoned it. Verdi blamed the scheduled conductor, Angelo Mariani, for this. He pointed to Mariani's lack of enthusiasm for the project, even though he had been part of the organising committee from the start, and it marked the beginning of the end of their long-term friendship. Verdi never forgave Mariani, although Mariani pleaded with him. The piece fell into oblivion until 1988, when Helmuth Rilling premiered the complete Messa per Rossini in Stuttgart.
In the meantime, Verdi kept toying with his "Libera me," frustrated that the combined commemoration of Rossini's life would not be performed in his lifetime.
In May 1873, the Italian writer and humanist Alessandro Manzoni, whom Verdi had admired all his adult life and met in 1868, died. Upon hearing of his death, Verdi resolved to complete a Requiem,this time entirely of his own writing, for Manzoni. Verdi travelled to Paris in June, where he commenced work on the Requiem, giving it the form we know today. It included a revised version of the "Libera me" originally composed for Rossini. The Requiem was first performed the following May in the church of San Marco in Milan, on the first anniversary of Manzoni's death.
Throughout the work, Verdi uses vigorous rhythms, sublime melodies, and dramatic contrasts much as he did in his operas to express the powerful emotions engendered by the text. The terrifying (and instantly recognizable) "Dies Irae" that introduces the traditional sequence of the Latin funeral rite is repeated throughout for a sense of unity, which allows Verdi to explore the feelings of loss and sorrow as well as the human desire for forgiveness and mercy found in the intervening movements of the Requiem. Trumpets surround the stage to produce an inescapable call to Judgement in the "Tuba mirum" (the resulting combination of brass and choral quadruple-fortissimo markings resulting in some of the loudest unamplified music ever written), and the almost oppressive atmosphere of the "Rex tremendae" creates a sense of unworthiness before the King of Tremendous Majesty. Yet the well-known tenor solo "Ingemisco" radiates hope for the sinner who asks for the Lord's mercy. Verdi also recycles and reworks the duet, from Act IV of Don Carlos, in the beautiful "Lachrymosa" which ends this sequence.
The joyful "Sanctus" (a complicated eight-part fugue scored for double chorus) begins with a brassy fanfare to announce him "who comes in the name of the Lord" and leads into an angelic "Agnus Dei" sung by the female soloists with the chorus. Finally the "Libera me," the oldest music by Verdi in the Requiem, interrupts. Here the soprano cries out, begging, "Deliver me, Lord, from eternal death ... when you will come to judge the world by fire."