In the 19th century, requiem as a musical genre grew ever more distant from its original function: namely, that of being part of the liturgy, taking care of the musical accompaniment of the Mass for the dead. By then, works bearing this attribute and conveying this message continued to exist on their own, as musical creations in their own right, ever less dependent on their “domestic”, that is Catholic, territory, and ever more frequently performed outside the ecclesiastic, and indeed sacred context, as part of the standard concert repertoire. The traditional functions of requiem, as established by centuries of practice (an integral part of liturgical service; an essential element of funeral ceremony; a tribute to an outstanding deceased yet immortalized personality) have been further enriched by modern-time and independent composers who have expanded them by new aspects, turning requiem as a genre into an embodiment of its composer’s lifelong contemplative record, with the work itself assuming a dimension of its own, as the yardstick of its composer’s artistic weight.
That was also how the genre of requiem was seen by the foremost Czech composer of the 19 th century, Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904). By the time he started to work on his Requiem, he already had to his credit several cantata compositions, including at least three first-rate works which had been very warmly received by the musical public: Stabat Mater; The Spectre’s Bride; and Saint Ludmila. No doubt Dvorak wanted his new, universally conceived sacred work to repeat the triumph scored by the magnificent musical fresco that was his Stabat Mater, whose English premiere of 1884 set off a long series of performances in that country. While Dvorak did not write the ReQuiem on any explicit commission from one of the English music festivals, we know from his surviving correspondence with a friend, Roman Catholic priest Jindrich Geisler, that in late 1889 he actually discussed with organizers of the Birmingham festival the possibility of presenting his new work there.
On New Year day in 1890, Dvorak started work on the composition’s comprehensive sketch, and by the mid-February of that year he had completed no fewer than seven parts. The progress of work was interrupted by the composer’s tour of Moscow and St. Petersburg in March, and a visit of London in April. Not even then, however, was the hiatus in his compositional activity complete: indeed, his note at the head of the work’s eighth number (Lacrimosa) — “Written in Cologne” attests to Dvorak’s capacity to concentrate on composing even in conditions that were far from ideal. From mid-May he carried on in his work in the safe haven of his summer retreat at Vysoka near the town of Pribram, central Bohemia. The period between August and end of October was devoted to writing the definitive version of the score, that is, orchestrating the completed sketch.
In less than a year from then, on 9th October, 1891, the Birmingham music festival witnessed the premiere of Dvorak’s Requiem, under the baton of the composer, which turned into an unequivocally triumphant occasion and a major success that was to be repeated subsequently, in March and April of the following years, in other venues in England, as well as in Bohemia and Moravia. The work’s Vienna performance, in March 1901 — awaited by the composer himself with unconcealed worries — became a spontaneous manifestation of admiration for the music of his Requiem, an attitude with which the imperial capital’s audience and critics alike seemingly strove to make up for their previous comparatively cool reception of Dvorak’s output.
If in his symphonic, chamber and song production Dvorak personifies the archetypal giver of joy, the harbinger of life’s bright side, in his sacred compositions he moves the listener by the sheer profundity and intimacy of contemplation, a sharp focus he achieved through inspiration by the content of ecclesiastic text. (Obviously it was by no means accidental that towards the end of his life Dvorak showed systematic interest in the study of Latin.) His emotion-filled creative zest was all the more worthy as it drew its source from the most abstract layers of spiritual motivation, from the artist’s own purest innermost urge.
The Requiem was not written for a specific purpose, it was not dictated by the demise of someone close to Dvorak’s heart, nor was it composed at the behest of some organizer of concert life. The idea of writing a “solemn mass” (as its autograph score is subtitled) was born from his aspiration to make his own statement on the crucial theme of life and death, while he himself stood on the threshold of his fiftieth year, an age that was in his time regarded as being synonymous with the peak of creative powers, yet at the same time as a borderline beyond which lay the actual old age, with its wisdom as well as its trappings. To Dvorak, the music of Requiem amounted to a summary of his personal philosophy of life, and simultaneously, a heartfelt confession of his own profound and sincere if unostentatious religious faith.
Dvorak’s Requiem sets virtually the full traditional text of the Roman Catholic formulary pertinent to the Mass for the deceased, which the composer divided in accord with his artistic design, into two proportionally balanced series, consisting of eight and five parts, respectively. Of these, only the penultimate part (Pie Jesu) infringes on the textual canon, as there the composer returns to the final two lines of the Dies irae sequence from the first part. The whole ninety-minute-long cycle is opened, and subsequently thoroughly penetrated, roofed, cemented, and closed, by an idea which constitutes the work’s cornerstone. This is a short, five-note motif, consisting of a minor second above and below encircling the fundamental note presently to come back to it. a tiny motif whose overall span does not exceed that of a major second or diminished third. There the halting, seemingly laborious progress of small intervals conveys an inherent sense of grief and resignation, albeit not devoid of an element of consolation: the composer treats that idea in his composition in a way very similar to Berlioz’s handling of his own “idée fixe”, with a consistence otherwise Quite exceptional for Dvorak.
The theme itself is in fact not entirely original; much earlier, it was also favoured by Neapolitan composers including in particular Aessandro Scarlatti. as its harmonization truly calls for the use of a spectacular extension from the so-called Neapolitan chord of the sixth (built on lowered second degree), through dominant, to key-note. In Dvorak’s case, however, this seQuence of notes generates a different impact: namely. he boosts the melodic force of his Requiem by an initial one-voice exposition, thereby sharpening the contrast between the minimum external melodic energy and the immense internal charge hidden within the theme. Thus as the music progresses, Dvorak moulds his leitmotif in the most incredible shifts of expression, the theme then re-emerging from the musical stream with persistent periodicity, as a darkly intimidating fixed idea. The motif is moreover likewise remarkable for its recurrence, as either conscious or unconscious Quote, in further compositions not just by Dvorak (where it occurs in the Othello overture, prior to the scene of Desdemona’s murder), but by others as well, including Josef Suk (2nd movement of the solemn symphony, Asrael), Bohuslav Martini (Symphony No. 3), and others still. last things of man may offer to the composer a seemingly narrow range of subject matter, yet one that involves an amazingly broad scope of “background scenery”.
On the plane of expression, the genre of requiem enables the composer to put into play the whole arsenal of all musical devices acceptable at a given time, stretching them to the very limit. For his part, Dvorak coped with the far from easy compositional task (19th century music does not exactly abound in exploits in this particular genre) more than admirably. His Requiem has furnished one of the most conclusive pieces of evidence refuting the misconceived theories on Dvorak as a “down-to-earth Czech musician”: there is not a trace here of confusion of concept, let alone flawed craftsmanship or technical imperfection. Much on the contrary: masterly orchestration, a refinement of harmony that comes across with utter naturalness, contrapuntal virtuosity (as best exemplified by the suggestive fugue, Quam olim Abrahae, No. 9), and an iron-firm structural logic – all of these attributes shatter mercilessly and definitively one-time vile theories talking of a talented musician incapable of attaining in his works anything like a significant depth of reflection.
Although the melodics of Requiem show no sign of the Quasi-folkloric “showiness” and straightforward appeal that are characteristic for Dvorak’s incontestably most inventive cantata, The Spectre’s Bride, but instead display a rather broader focus and lower degree of regularity, here as well Dvorak does handle his ideas with the proverbial profligacy of one of the greatest melody-writers in the history of European music. Showing no compassion for the soloists, he supplies them with parts that are exacting as regards both duration and extreme playing difficulty (involving interval skips and frequent low positions), bringing the work’s solo performance ambitions to a climax in the twenty-three-bar a cappella soprano, contralto and tenor solo, in the Pie Jesu part. Dvorak’s music is supremely effective both in passages of high drama (Dies irae), and in predominantly meditative ones. In Requiem, he left behind a work whose genuine spirituality has no peer in the entire 19 th-century Czech music production. Vít Roubíček (translated by Ivan Vomàčka)
