Requiem

The Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known formally (in Latin) as the Missa pro defunctis or Missa defunctorum, is a liturgical service of the Roman Catholic Church and its Eastern Rite. It is sometimes observed by other denominations of Christianity in other forms such as the Church of England and Eastern Orthodoxy.

20th century developments

In the 20th century the requiem evolved in several new directions. The genre of war requiems is perhaps the most notable, which comprise of compositions dedicated to the memory of people killed in wartime. These often include extra-liturgical poems of a pacifist or non-liturgical nature; for example, the War Requiem of Benjamin Britten juxtaposes the Latin text with the poetry of Wilfred Owen, and Robert Steadman's Mass in Black intersperses environmental poetry and prophecies of Nostradamus. The several Holocaust requiems may be regarded as a specific subset of this type.

Related Topics:
War Requiem - Benjamin Britten - Wilfred Owen - Robert Steadman - Mass in Black - Environmental - Poetry - Prophecies - Nostradamus - Holocaust

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Lastly, the 20th century saw the development of secular requiems, written for public performance without specific religious observance (e.g., Kabalevsky's War Requiem, to poems by Robert Rozhdestvensky), and some composers have written purely instrumental works bearing the title of requiem, as exemplified by the most famous of these, Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem.

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