Caveat Lector

Requiem masses are a golden excuse for composers to mess around with the audience’s emotions, to grab it by the collective throat and twist. The only reason I can sit through Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” without crying is that I sang it in high school; it’s manipulative in the extreme. But they all are, in their separate ways—Verdi will happily scare you straight, Fauré wants very badly to reassure you, and Mozart will run you right through the emotional wringer, awe to grief to terror.

The more I get used to singing this Requiem of Duruflé’s, the weirder its emotional content seems. I don’t agree with what seems to be common wisdom about it; I’m finding it the nervousest requiem mass I’ve ever heard or sung. I’m honestly not sure if it’s me, the music, or the effort of getting the music right, but I can feel tension building in me just listening to my rehearsal CDs.

The Introit starts calmly enough in the men’s voices, but there’s this little unresolved wriggle going on in the low strings that feels anxious, and the chanted treble “Te decet…” lines with their worried woodwinds don’t help. When we finally get back to a drone of “Requiem aeternam dona eis” again, it sounds like a plea, and not a plea assured of success, either.

The Kyrie is probably the most straightforward movement in the piece; it’s a plea and it’s not pretending to be anything else. Nice counterpoint, nice long lines in each part that are fun to sing, nice thrilling forte section toward the end—but even so, Duruflé ties the movement off quietly and in the lower part of the singers’ ranges, very doubtful-sounding.

The Domine Jesu Christe starts with more tooth-grinding low stuff in the strings, and expands into an almost Mozartian description of the horrors of hell. The middle section feels rushed, frankly afraid, before turning matters over to the low brass and strings again. The “sed signifer sanctus Michael” promise sounds remote, disinterested—sure, a vow was made, but does it matter? Then a terribly uncertain, unhappy baritone solo (we won’t have a soloist, but that’s all right; our baritone section has this line just exactly perfect) asks for death to give way to life. The answer is a repeat of the promise, just as remote and disinterested as before. This is not reassuring. Not even a little bit.

Duruflé finally lets the chorus cut loose in the Sanctus with some real from-the-gut hosannas accompanied by trumpet fanfare, but he undercuts chorus and trumpets both beforehand and afterwards. It’s as though the piece has to build up its courage to dare a moment’s self-assurance, promptly returning afterwards to its normal timorous state.

I haven’t heard the Pie Jesu since I sang it in college (it’s normally a solo; my college women’s chorus sang it as a unison piece), but I remember it being lovely and pleading. The Agnus Dei is soft, dark, rather forgettable. Much emphasis on eternal rest, which after all these fidgety troubled pleas is entirely understandable.

The Lux Aeterna is just weird. I don’t get what Duruflé is driving at with it. It bounces this cutesy, swingy, pastoral introduction around the woodwinds for a bit, and then hands the chorus this off-beat chant melody that frankly sounds smug as sung. If I were pleading for eternal light before a stern judge, I wouldn’t send chirpy sparrowlike sopranos to do it for me!

I suppose I don’t think Duruflé believes “quia pius es.” I can only give this movement sense if the melody is almost parodic, being tossed off as nothing anyone is really supposed to give credence to. The sober reprise of “requiem aeternam” on a single chant tone again utterly fails to reassure; it makes the soprano sparrows’ final “quia pius es” sound thoughtlessly featherbrained by comparison.

Like the Kyrie, the Libera Me feels emotionally honest. The chorus is scared, it’s got plenty to be scared of, and it makes no bones about wanting to be set free. It does not, however, offer much hope about that eventuality. Nothing that ends with the tenors sighing, then joining the altos on a short phrase ending on a pianissimo low F-sharp is hopeful.

The chirpy, untrustworthy soprano chant is back to open the In Paradisum. And the choir of angels that’s supposed to carry everybody off to heaven? Is sung about in lots of troubled suspensions that Duruflé never resolves—he ends on the scariest, uneasiest ninth chord you ever heard, and just lets it die off into nothing.

Was the guy a nihilist? Calvinist? Secret atheist? What? Why on earth would anyone want this piece played at a memorial? For the postmodern anguish of it all? I can believe that this Requiem is a reaction to Fauré’s, actually, because the missing Dies Irae is a dead giveaway, but on the whole, it strikes me as a deconstructionist reaction. If Fauré wants to reassure, Duruflé wants to perturb.

Not that it’s not a gorgeous piece—it is, you should all come hear it, and these rough scribbles of mine are not doing it justice—but it’s just not a piece I’d want to offer someone grieving.