Requiem

In the early 1980s, John Rutter was commissioned to create a pioneering new performing edition of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem. He had known the Frenchman’s work since schooldays and later recalled “experiencing an uncanny feeling that it would be a dear friend and companion on my life’s journey”. Following the death of his own father in 1984, Rutter decided to compose a memorial work based on sections from the Latin Requiem text, interleaved with consoling words in English from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Rutter’s Requiem, like Fauré’s, cultivates an intense sense of reverence and tenderness with melodies that speak directly to the heart. He conducted its first performance in 1985 at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. The work’s contemplative nature unfolds from the measured tread of the first of its seven movements, “Requiem aeternam”. Rutter intensifies the music’s prayer-like intimacy with a haunting choral setting of Psalm 130, “Out of the deep”, prefaced and accompanied by solo cello, and adds tender lyricism to the picture with sublime settings of “Pie Jesu”, “The Lord Is My Shepherd” and the closing “Lux aeterna” for solo soprano and chorus.