Morphemics

Stevenson Requiem

The idea for this piece came after thumbing through a book of poetry and reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s (1850-1894) Requiem. He took his title from the opening word of the Requiem Mass, that is, the Missa pro defunctis, or, “Mass for the Dead.” The words to his poem are these:

Under the wide and starry sky,/Dig the grave and let me lie./Glad did I live and gladly die,/And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:/Here he lies where he long’d to be;/Home is the sailor, home from the sea,/And the hunter home from the hill.

I decided to combine these with the opening words of the Requiem Mass, which are as follows:

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine:/ et lux perpetua luceat eis./Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion,/et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem:/exaudi orationem meam,/ ad te omnis caro veniet.

This is usually followed by the opening words of the standard mass, which are in Greek:

Kyrie eleison:/Christe eleison:/Kyrie eleison.

Each verse of the Stevenson poem is repeated twice. The first verse is sung in conjunction with the Latin text from “Requiem” to “luceat eis.” This section is in d minor with a march-like triple meter. After this, the meter changes to quadruple and the key modulates to e minor. A short fugue begins in the base section and works its way up the sections of the choir. The words are the Latin text from “Te decet” to “orationem meum.” Meanwhile, any section that hasn’t started or has finished the fugue section is singing the second verse of the Stevenson poem in relatively drawn out chords. This is followed by three repetitions of the last line of the Stevenson poem being sung with “ad te omnis caro veniet.” Sopranos and tenors first, then altos and bases, and then all four sections together. The second verse of the Stevenson poem is now repeated. The first two lines go with the Kyrie. The Christe is song by itself. The sopranos start and are followed in order by altos, tenors, and bases. Next, the bases continue with the final to lines of the English text. This time, the parts build on each other in reverse: bases, tenors, altos, and sopranos. As each part completes the English lines, they sing “Kyrie eleison” until the end.

Hopefully, this will provide some idea of the what choir is supposed to be saying. Since I don’t actually have a choir of my own, I’ve had to settle for a computer generated sound file. Currently, my laptop’s singing vocabulary is limited to “ah.”

Allegro2007StevensonRequiem.pdf StevensonRequiem.mp3 Posted by kcourter at maio 2, 2007 07:28 PM | TrackBack