Dies Irae

A Guide to Requiem Music

By (author) Robert Chase Foreword by Jahja Ling

Hardback - £123.00

Publication date:

27 June 2003

Length of book:

736 pages

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

ISBN-13: 9780810846647

Since time immemorial, the response of the living to death has been to commemorate the life of the departed through ceremonies and rituals. For nearly two millennia, the Christian quest for eternal peace has been expressed in a poetic-musical structure known as the requiem.

Traditional requiem texts, among them the anonymous medieval Latin poem Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath"), have inspired an untold number of composers in different ages and serving different religions, Western and Eastern. This book, the first comprehensive survey of requiem music for nearly half a century, provides a great deal of diverse and detailed information that will be of use to the professional musician, the musical scholar, the choral conductor, the theologian and liturgist, and the general reader.

The main body of the guide is a description of some 250 requiems. Each entry includes a concise biography of the composer and a description of the composition. Details of voicing, orchestration, editions, and discography are given. An extensive bibliography includes dictionaries, encyclopedias, prayer books, monographs, and articles. An appendix lists more than 1700 requiems not discussed within the main text.
If Chase is correct that there are between 2,000 and 2,500 "requiem settings" in existence, he has pulled together a compendium of most of them.The book is a valuable resource for that reason alone.