for two sopranos, mixed choir and orchestra<\/p>\n
Duration: approx. 35 minutes<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A requiem is about death and the dead. A serious subject. No one knows shat happens after death. We may believe. We may speculate. But no living human being can say.<\/p>\n
In spite of \u2013 or perhaps thanks to \u2013 the gravity of the subject, I found this an inspiring piece to compose. I enjoyed working on it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There are numerous traditional Latin texts to choose among, concerning despair and conviction, wrath and release. Plenty of drama there. I also wove contemporary and classical Swedish poetry into my requiem.<\/p>\n
Many composers have written requiems across the ages. Writing one today requires a dialogue with them.<\/p>\n
\u2013 How did you choose your texts? What form did you give your Kyrie (Lord, have mercy.)? Is it a prayer or a cry for help?<\/p>\n
\u2013 How did you compose the Sanctus (Holy, holy)? I made it a whisper. A passing breeze from the Lord.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Then there’s valley of the shadow of death? Did you use the text: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” or a different one? In my Requiem the choir meanders through beautiful thirds while the orchestra attacks from the shadows, dissonant. The result is most expressive.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And what about Libera me (“Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death, on that fearful day when the heavens are moved and the earth”)? There’s drama for you! I have the choir calling loudly and forcefully, and the percussionist letting loose with the tam-tam and the thunder sheet.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2013 In one movement, a soprano soloist sings in Swedish (my native tongue, my personal angle) of heaven. Thinking about the kingdom of heaven, she sings so beautifully, with such painful grade that suddenly her voice cracks, shifting from beauty to despair. I see this as my Lacrymosa. It was actually the first part of the requiem I composed. Ages ago. This piece matured slowly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
– Incidentally, a personal question. What do you think? Is it necessary to be a believer, I mean a firm one hundred percent believer, to compose a requiem? Or is it possible to use the music to kind of explore the truth of all those things people say about God, death, and the afterlife?
\nMusic doesn’t lie. Music is true.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2013 There’s something else I want to tell you: I couldn’t talk about death alone. I had to put birth in there, too. And so my requiem opens with these lines from a poem by Kerstin Ekman:<\/p>\n
The newborn grasps<\/p>\n
at fingers<\/p>\n
seeks with mouth,<\/p>\n
and eyes, trusts.<\/p>\n
The trust is there<\/p>\n
with neither wings nor branches<\/p>\n
lets itself fall<\/p>\n
is the gravity within us<\/p>\n
God.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, a requiem is also about us, the living, as much as about the dead. Don’t you agree?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Karin Rehnqvist, September 2008<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" for two sopranos, mixed choir and orchestra Duration: approx. 35 minutes A requiem is about death and the dead. 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