All Souls’ is a celebration that commemorates the dead. Not surprisingly, there are loads of great pieces linked with death – our own or that of a loved one. One of my favorites is “Bring Us, O Lord God”, a setting of a prayer for a peaceful death by the poet and priest John Donne, composed by the English cathedral musician William H. Harris.
I’m said before that Mozart wrote the Requiem against which all others are judged. I’ve also mentioned how the intense emotions of that piece foreshadow a big change in musical style between the 18th and 19th centuries. Mozart’s is a masterpiece, classical in balanced form and romantic in dramatic execution. But what if we dump that balance and go straight for the feels – specifically, the OMG-I’m-afraid-to-die day-of-judgment fire-and-brimstone scared-out-of-my-wits feels?
Enter Giuseppe Verdi, the revolutionary composer who helped Italian Opera stay on the map. His Requiem IS an opera; the emotional drama is as chilling as Othello, heart-wrenching as Traviata, dark as Rigoletto. When we hear about the day of judgment, we are scared. We are very very scared. And when Verdi’s angel sounds the trumpet (at 2:25, “Tuba Mirum”), it makes me want to cower under my desk. Mozart’s Tuba? not so much. Makes me want to do a Mr. Bean dance.
Kudos to the performers here for having A LOT of singers in the choir, so the brass could play at full-volume!
The music is scary up until 4:10, at which point it’s the conductor’s face which is scary.
Fate can be a meany mean jerk-face sometimes! Poor Carl Orff had an established career as a composer and was well known for his work with children’s music education. When he was 40, he composed his great oratorio Carmina Burana, and after it became so popular, he asked his publisher to destroy all his previous work, so that Carmina would mark the beginning of his career.
Nope. Sorry. Your fate has already been decided. You will only be known for this one composition.
But what a composition it is! It’s everywhere – you can find it in movies, video games, commercials, sports events, and flash mobs (I was there!) It’s an awesome romp through the carnal pleasures of life – some of the poems are quite erotic, some philosophical, some are brutal mockery, some are just plain weird, and yes, there are even fart jokes.
O Fortune, like the moon of ever changing state, you are always waxing or waning; hateful life now is brutal, now pampers our feelings with its game; poverty, power, it melts them like ice.
Fate, savage and empty, you are a turning wheel, your position is uncertain, your favour is idle and always likely to disappear; covered in shadows and veiled you bear upon me too; now my back is naked through the sport of your wickedness.
The chance of prosperity and of virtue is not now mine; whether willing or not, a man is always liable for Fortune’s service. At this hour without delay touch the strings! Because through luck she lays low the brave, all join with me in lamentation!
I mourn the blows of Fortune with flowing eyes, because her gifts she has treacherously taken back from me. Opportunity is rightly described as having hair on her forehead, but there usually follows the bald patch at the back.
On the throne of Fortune I had sat elated, crowned with the gay flower of prosperity; however much I flourished, happy and blessed, now I have fallen from the pinnacle, deprived of my glory.
The wheel of Fortune turns; I sink, debased; another is raised up; lifted too high, a king sits on the top; let him beware of ruin! Under the axle we read, Queen Hecuba.
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