Requiem in C minor

Introit and Kyrie

Graduale: Requiem aeternam

Sequence: Dies irae – Recordare – Confutatis maledictis – Lacrymosa

Offertorium: Domine Jesu Christe – Quam olim Abrahae – Hostias

Sanctus

Pie Jesu

Agnus Dei

While it is going rather too far to rank Cherubini alongside Lully – another imigrant composer from Florence but one who had an even more profound influence on French musical life – he did enjoy an enormous international reputation during the 19th century. Beethoven declared him “the greatest living composer” and had a particular liking for his Mass in C minor, a work which Schumann considered “unequalled” and Brahms thought “marvellous”. In France, where Cherubini spent the last 55 years of his life, opinions fluctuated – usually in accordance with the changing political situation before, during and after the Revolution. But even Berlioz, who resented his reactionary attitude during his long directorship of the Paris Conservatoire, admired his church music, the Requiem in C minor above all.

Most of Cherubini’s church music was written during the second half of his career. Before that, during the first 30 years after he had settled in Paris in 1787, he had been interested primarily in opera, with mixed fortunes but enjoying great success with Médée in 1797 and Les deux journées in 1800. After the failure of Anacréon in 1803, however, he concluded there was no future for him as an opera composer in Paris and spent two years writing no music at all, devoting himself to painting and botany instead. What brought him back to composition was a visit in 1808 to an old friend, the Princess of Chimay, at her estate near the border of France and Belgium, where the villagers asked him to provide something to perform in the local church on St Cecilia’s day. The Kyrie and Gloria he was persuaded to write on that occasion were incorporated in the Mass in F he completed a year later. He wrote another Mass (in D minor) in 1811 and his appointment as Superintendant of the Chapel Royal in 1814 inevitably increased his activity in this area.

The Requiem in C minor was commissioned in 1815, after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, to commemorate the the execution of Louis XVI – a project which, as a monarchist, Cherubini took very seriously. Determined that the new work should have nothing operatic about it, he excluded solo voices and avoided elaborate vocal lines. He applied a similar economy to the choral texture and, with one striking exception, refrained from counterpoint so complex that it would obscure verbal clarity. The Introit and Kyrie, which combines two normally separate sections of the text in one symphonically constructed movement, is a characteristic example. It is held together by the sombre, slowly winding melody introduced in C minor by bassoons and lower strings in the opening bars. That melody recurs in the orchestra throughout the first two lines (“Requiem aeternam” etc) sung pianissimo in four-part harmony, disappears during the modestly contrapuntal setting of the next three lines (“Te decet hymnus” etc) and returns for the recall of the opening lines which now admit a more developed textural treatment. Its most important function is to make a firm and clear link between the Introit and the Kyrie, which it does by introducing the latter section and punctuating it after each phrase.

The Graduale in G minor, which features quiet antiphonal exchanges between sopranos and tenors on the one hand and altos and basses on the other, is a short movement designed to offset the Dies irae Sequence where, in most settings of the Requiem, much of the drama is to be found. Even Cherubini, in a work where he has otherwise renounced theatrical spectacle, cannot resist a brass fanfare, a stunning stroke of the tam-tam, scurrying strings and apprehensive voices. They go on to hail “tuba mirum,” shrink back at “mors stupebit” and proclaim “Rex tremendae majestatis” in the first fortissimo in the whole work. The chorus melts into prayer mode on “Salva me” and a new two-note motif is adopted by the strings for “Recordare.” Where another composer might have used solo voices for maximum contrast, Cherubini achieves a similar effect by introducing each section in turn before bringing them together on the top of a crescendo on “in parte dextra”. Brass instruments make another dramatic intervention at “Confutatis maledictis” before the chorus once again sinks into prayer on “Voca me.” A reduction in tempo and the entry of a gentle broken-chord motif on the violins precedes a “Lacrymosa” expressively fluctuating between forte and piano.

The Offertorium in E flat major is another movement which combines sections usually presented separately. Unlike the Introit and Kyrie, however, it is held together not by a recurring motif but by the sheer power of the central “Quam olim Abrahae promisisti” – a line which is traditionally set as a choral fugue and which here, in a surprising display of contrapuntal virtuosity, inspires one of the most brilliant examples of its kind. Striking from the beginning by way of the contrast between its quick tempo and the Andante of the “Domine Jesu Christe” which precedes it, the fugue adds another layer of intensity with an acceleration to a still quicker tempo. It is followed by a Larghettto “Hostias” beginning in C major but then modulating in such a way as to prepare for a resoundingly conclusive repeat of the fugue in E flat major.

Retaining something of the splendour of the preceding movement, Cherubini now offers a short but sturdy Sanctus in A flat major, briefly offsetting the confidently affirmative outer sections with a pianissimo “Benedictus” in the middle. The Pie Jesu, in a slow F minor, seems to come from different, distant world with its plaintive vocal lines and its expressively chromatic interventions from clarinets and bassoon. Although it begins by restoring the tonality to C minor, the Agnus Dei is harmonically the most adventurous movement of all, creating an uncertainty which, in an ending much admired by Berlioz, is resolved only by the quietly repeated Cs in the chorus and the final luminous chord of C major.

The first performance of the Requiem in C minor took place in the Cathédrale royale de Saint-Denis in 1817. Nineteen years later, after the Archbishop of Paris had objected to the use of female voices in church music, Cherubini wrote a Requiem in D minor for three-part male-voice chorus and orchestra, which was performed at his own funeral in 1842. On the 150th anniversary of his birth his masterpiece in C minor is an entirely fitting tribute.

Gerald Larner © 2010