Mozart's Requiem, Dark and Fantastic

Performance TODAY, link is in the title.

Please consider coming out to Moody at 7:30 p.m. to hear Mozart's Requiem, one of the most widely-known, haunting choral compositions.

The thing about this requiem is it seems vastly different from others I've heard. Others are full of sadness and, always in the end, hope. Here, too, there is hope--but only after movements of sheer terror and anger. Truthfully, this requiem feels as dark and fantastic as some of the novels we've read--"Libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum de poenis inferni et de profundo lacu! Libera eas de ore leonis!" That is, "Save the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell and from the deep pit. Deliver them from the mouth of the lion!"

When singing this Mozart piece--his last work, left unfinished at his death and wrapped up by one of his pupils--we hear bits of odd chords and minor keys, things that feel like "gypsy music," for lack of a better term. Listen to the haunting melody of "Lacrymosa." We are told to sing with anger, as in "Dies Irae"--"Day of Wrath." We are told to sing with terror, as in "Rex Tremendae" ("King of tremendous majesty, who freely saves the worthy--save me!"). We sing with pleading and with all the hurt and confusion that we feel through Mozart's music. In the end, we ask for eternal rest and a place with the holy saints, "for You are merciful"--even on the last note, in the last phrase, when we have seemed to calm and be reassured, we remind God that He is merciful with something that is still a kind of frightened hope.

"Mozart was very angry with death," our director has told us. The School of Music chose specifically that we perform this work on Good Friday. I feel it fitting. On Good Friday we are sorrowful, repentant, perhaps fearful, perhaps a bit angry--on Good Friday is confusion, but all may resolve on Easter Sunday. Begging your pardon if you're not religious or Christian, but music is very religious to me, and that's how I see it.

And so, again, I hope you'll come hear us play and sing tonight. Major works of music have ways of being life-changing. It has happened to me before with the Brahms Requiem. I'm not sure what Mozart will bring tonight, but I know it's been stuck in my head all week. It's something that has the potential to stay with you. And hopefully we will sing well enough to leave you with a sense of awe for--something. For anything.