Requiem: The Music of Eternal

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Throughout each era of Western music history, composers have created music meant to accompany and/or depict the soul's journey into eternal life. In this course, we will review several musical settings of the Requiem Mass from medieval to modern times. Beginning with an examination of the proper texts of the Requiem Mass set during the early centuries of the Catholic Church, students will understand the liturgical basis for the Requiem and how its components were expressed through Gregorian Chant and complex polyphonic Renaissance works. Later, students will explore the evolution of the Requiem from the church to the concert hall. Emphasis will be directed towards understanding how composers set distinctive texts of the Requiem to music in relation to their personal view of religion. The course will end with a survey of modern expressionistic and reactionary liturgical and concert settings of the Requiem. Students will leave the course with a firm grasp on the progression of Requiem works and how the genre's evolution accompanied contemporary attitudes and theologies of death.