Messa da Requiem

SKU: CA.2732203

ISBN 9790007248413. Latin.

Through works such as Verdi’s Requiem or Puccini’s Messa di Gloria, we know that the great composers of Italian bel canto opera also wrote marvelous sacred music. Yet most of these pieces are rarely performed. This is also true of Gaetano Donizetti’s Messa di Requiem, which he composed as an expression of grief at the early death of Vincenzo Bellini in 1835. Neither performed nor printed during Donizetti’s lifetime, the Requiem is ripe for rediscovery. A rich and highly intense work, it features dramatic choruses with full orchestra, fugues, and a cappella passages that alternate with lengthy cantilenas for the soloists. These solo cantilenas are often scored for three male voices accompanied by low winds to create a dark timbre. The soprano and alto soloists do not themselves sing any solo arias, instead remaining part of the solo ensemble.Carus is offering a critical edition of this editorially challenging work complete with vocal score, choral score, and all orchestral parts.. Score available separately - see item CA.2732200.

SKU: CA.2732205

ISBN 9790007248420. Latin.

Through works such as Verdi’s Requiem or Puccini’s Messa di Gloria, we know that the great composers of Italian bel canto opera also wrote marvelous sacred music. Yet most of these pieces are rarely performed. This is also true of Gaetano Donizetti’s Messa di Requiem, which he composed as an expression of grief at the early death of Vincenzo Bellini in 1835. Neither performed nor printed during Donizetti’s lifetime, the Requiem is ripe for rediscovery. A rich and highly intense work, it features dramatic choruses with full orchestra, fugues, and a cappella passages that alternate with lengthy cantilenas for the soloists. These solo cantilenas are often scored for three male voices accompanied by low winds to create a dark timbre. The soprano and alto soloists do not themselves sing any solo arias, instead remaining part of the solo ensemble.Carus is offering a critical edition of this editorially challenging work complete with vocal score, choral score, and all orchestral parts.. Score available separately - see item CA.2732200.

SKU: HL.49018099

ISBN 9790001158428. UPC: 884088567347. 8.25x11.75x0.457 inches. Latin - German.

On letting go(Concerning the selection of the texts) In the selection of the texts, I have allowed myself to be motivated and inspired by the concept of 'letting go'. This appears to me to be one of the essential aspects of dying, but also of life itself. We humans cling far too strongly to successful achievements, whether they have to do with material or ideal values, or relationships of all kinds. We cannot and do not want to let go, almost as if our life depended on it. As we will have to practise the art of letting go at the latest during our hour of death, perhaps we could already make a start on this while we are still alive. Tagore describes this farewell with very simple but strikingly vivid imagery: 'I will return the key of my door'. I have set this text for tenor solo. Here I imagine, and have correspondingly noted in a certain passage of the score, that the protagonist finds himself as though 'in an ocean' of voices in which he is however not drowning, but immersing himself in complete relaxation. The phenomenon of letting go is described even more simply and tersely in Psalm 90, verse 12: 'So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom'. This cannot be expressed more plainly.I have begun the requiem with a solo boy's voice singing the beginning of this psalm on a single note, the note A. This in effect says it all. The work comes full circle at the culmination with a repeat of the psalm which subsequently leads into a resplendent 'lux aeterna'. The intermediate texts of the Requiem which highlight the phenomenon of letting go in the widest spectrum of colours originate on the one hand from the Latin liturgy of the Messa da Requiem (In Paradisum, Libera me, Requiem aeternam, Mors stupebit) and on the other hand from poems by Joseph von Eichendorff, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore and Rainer Maria Rilke.All texts have a distinctive positive element in common and view death as being an organic process within the great system of the universe, for example when Hermann Hesse writes: 'Entreiss dich, Seele, nun der Zeit, entreiss dich deinen Sorgen und mache dich zum Flug bereit in den ersehnten Morgen' ['Tear yourself way , o soul, from time, tear yourself away from your sorrows and prepare yourself to fly away into the long-awaited morning'] and later: 'Und die Seele unbewacht will in freien Flugen schweben, um im Zauberkreis der Nacht tief und tausendfach zu leben' ['And the unfettered soul strives to soar in free flight to live in the magic sphere of the night, deep and thousandfold']. Or Joseph von Eichendorff whose text evokes a distant song in his lines: 'Und meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flugel aus. Flog durch die stillen Lande, als floge sie nach Haus' ['And my soul spread its wings wide. Flew through the still country as if homeward bound.']Here a strong romantically tinged occidental resonance can be detected which is however also accompanied by a universal spirit going far beyond all cultures and religions. In the beginning was the sound Long before any sort of word or meaningful phrase was uttered by vocal chords, sounds, vibrations and tones already existed. This brings us back to the music. Both during my years of study and at subsequent periods, I had been an active participant in the world of contemporary music, both as percussionist and also as conductor and composer. My early scores had a somewhat adventurous appearance, filled with an abundance of small black dots: no rhythm could be too complicated, no register too extreme and no harmony too dissonant. I devoted myself intensely to the handling of different parameters which in serial music coexist in total equality: I also studied aleatory principles and so-called minimal music.I subsequently emigrated and took up residence in Spain from where I embarked on numerous travels over the years to India, Africa and South America. I spent repeated periods during this time as a resident in non-European countries. This meant that the currents of contemporary music swept past me vaguely and at a great distance. What I instead absorbed during this period were other completely new cultures in which I attempted to immerse myself as intensively as possible.I learned foreign languages and came into contact with musicians of all classes and styles who had a different cultural heritage than my own: I was intoxicated with the diversity of artistic potential.Nevertheless, the further I distanced myself from my own Western musical heritage, the more this returned insistently in my consciousness.The scene can be imagined of sitting somewhere in the middle of the Brazilian jungle surrounded by the wailing of Indians and out of the blue being provided with the opportunity to hear Beethoven's late string quartets: this can be a heart-wrenching experience, akin to an identity crisis. This type of experience can also be described as cathartic. Whatever the circumstances, my 'renewed' occupation with the 'old' country would not permit me to return to the point at which I as an audacious young student had maltreated the musical parameters of so-called contemporary music. A completely different approach would be necessary: an extremely careful approach, inching my way gradually back into the Western world: an approach which would welcome tradition back into the fold, attempt to unfurl the petals and gently infuse this tradition with a breath of contemporary life.Although I am aware that I will not unleash a revolution or scandal with this approach, I am nevertheless confident as, with the musical vocabulary of this Requiem, I am travelling in an orbit in which no ballast or complex structures will be transported or intimated: on the contrary, I have attempted to form the message of the texts in music with the naivety of a 'homecomer'. Harald WeissColonia de San PedroMarch 2009.

SKU: CA.4031700

ISBN 9790007104580. Language: Latin.

Among Verdi's many compositions, as a work of sacred music, the Requiem remains unique. It was composed as a musical memorial for the Italian national poet Allessandro Manzoni, deeply admired by Verdi, and was first performed on the first anniversary of his death on 22 May 1874 in Milan Cathedral. The exploration of many extremes places Verdi's tonal language with musical means wholly in the service of a dramatized liturgy. The edition is based on the autograph as the primary source and makes accessible one of the most important requiem settings of the 19th century in a modern scholarly edition. In addition to the musical text the score contains a detailed foreword in three languages, a critical report with information on the source situation, the edition and the various readings. The complete performance material will be available for sale. This work is now available in carus music, the choir app!

SKU: CA.2730305

ISBN 9790007137045. Language: Latin.

Among Verdi's many compositions, as a work of sacred music, the Requiem remains unique. It was composed as a musical memorial for the Italian national poet Allessandro Manzoni, deeply admired by Verdi, and was first performed on the first anniversary of his death on 22 May 1874 in Milan Cathedral. The exploration of many extremes places Verdi's tonal language with musical means wholly in the service of a dramatized liturgy. The edition is based on the autograph as the primary source and makes accessible one of the most important requiem settings of the 19th century in a modern scholarly edition. In addition to the musical text the score contains a detailed foreword in three languages, a critical report with information on the source situation, the edition and the various readings. The complete performance material will be available for sale. This work is now available in carus music, the choir app! Score available separately - see item CA.2730300.

SKU: CA.2730311

ISBN 9790007201357. Language: Latin.

Among Verdi's many compositions, as a work of sacred music, the Requiem remains unique. It was composed as a musical memorial for the Italian national poet Allessandro Manzoni, deeply admired by Verdi, and was first performed on the first anniversary of his death on 22 May 1874 in Milan Cathedral. The exploration of many extremes places Verdi's tonal language with musical means wholly in the service of a dramatized liturgy. The edition is based on the autograph as the primary source and makes accessible one of the most important requiem settings of the 19th century in a modern scholarly edition. In addition to the musical text the score contains a detailed foreword in three languages, a critical report with information on the source situation, the edition and the various readings. The complete performance material will be available for sale. This work is now available in carus music, the choir app! Score and part available separately - see item CA.2730300.

SKU: CA.2730319

ISBN 9790007137052. Language: Latin.

Among Verdi's many compositions, as a work of sacred music, the Requiem remains unique. It was composed as a musical memorial for the Italian national poet Allessandro Manzoni, deeply admired by Verdi, and was first performed on the first anniversary of his death on 22 May 1874 in Milan Cathedral. The exploration of many extremes places Verdi's tonal language with musical means wholly in the service of a dramatized liturgy. The edition is based on the autograph as the primary source and makes accessible one of the most important requiem settings of the 19th century in a modern scholarly edition. In addition to the musical text the score contains a detailed foreword in three languages, a critical report with information on the source situation, the edition and the various readings. The complete performance material will be available for sale. This work is now available in carus music, the choir app! Score and parts available separately - see item CA.2730300.

SKU: CA.2730800

ISBN 9790007254667. Latin.

Verdi's Requiem is one of those works that almost every choir would like to have sung (at least) once. This arrangement for chamber orchestra means that smaller choirs and choirs with more limited space or financial means also now have the opportunity of performing this popular work. The scoring, with seven different wind and brass instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, and trombone) plus strings, timpani and bass drum, guarantees a wide dynamic range and a nuanced sonority. The four offstage trumpet parts can be played either as in the original, reduced to two trumpets, or even omitted. The relevant passages in the Tuba mirum also contain ossia passages for the orchestral brass, so that they can play their parts in performance without the need for offstage trumpets. All the vocal parts (soloists and chorus) are identical to the original version, so the vocal score, vocal score XL, and chorus scores of the existing Carus edition can be used by the chorus.
Michael Betzner-Brandt's successful arrangement of the Requiem (Carus 27.303/50) radically reduces the scoring to five instrumentalists and transfers the work to a different sonority, but in the arrangement by Joachim Linckelmann the symphonic character is retained.

*wind and brass parts reduced to just seven single instruments
*maximum flexibility in the use of offstage trumpets
*vocal scores and chorus scores from the original version can be used
*carus plus: the work (original version) is available in carus music, the choir app, and in the practice series Carus Choir Coach.