Alex Woolf Requiem

ORGAN ALEX WOOLF GRAY REQUIEM ANTHONY | VOX LUNA CELLO CELLO NICKY SPENCE TENOR | IAIN BURNSIDE PIANO PHILIP HIGHAM ALEX WOOLF (b. 1995) REQUIEM Nicky Spence tenor (tracks 3, 6, 8) Iain Burnside piano (tracks 3, 6, 8) 1 Introit [4:26] Philip Higham cello (tracks 1–4, 6–8, 10) 2 Kyrie [7:33] Vox Luna (tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) 3 The Fall [7:34] Anthony Gray organ (tracks 1, 2, 4–6, 8, 10) 4 Offertory [4:44] Alex Woolf conductor 5 Sanctus [4:20] Christopher Mitchell alto, Joseph Edwards bass 6 A Crowd of Cares [3:24] 7 Agnus Dei [5:45] Gwendolen Martin soprano, Sophie Timms alto, William Wright tenor, Joseph Edwards bass 8 The Year’s Midnight [6:33] Production supported by the Gemma Classical Music Trust (Registered Charity No 1121090) 9 Pie Jesu [5:45] http://gemmatrust.com/ 10 In Paradisum [5:37] Production supported by The Finzi Trust (Registered Charity No 313047) Gwendolen Martin soprano https://www.geraldfinzi.org/ Total playing time [55:46] Alex Woolf is supported by the PRS Foundation’s Open Fund https://prsfoundation.com/ premiere recording Recorded on 24-26 November 2019 at Cover image: Trygve Skogrand, St John the Evangelist, Upper Norwood The Dance (2014), digital collage / private www.delphianrecords.com/join Producer: Paul Baxter collection; © Trygve Skogrand/Bridgeman Engineer: Matthew Swan Design: Drew Padrutt 24-bit digital editing: Matthew Swan Booklet editor: John Fallas 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK Session photography © Delphian Records www.delphianrecords.com A note from the composer The requiem in history and today Grant them eternal rest, Lord, Sanctus sees both choir and organ at their What constitutes a requiem in the twenty- the fear and dread associated with the Last and let perpetual light shine upon them. most emphatic, with cello absent for the first first century? Our understanding of the genre Judgment and a potential descent to hell – time. The first half of this movement is full of is shaped by its canonical works – settings were removed from the liturgy. The use of The opening lines of a Requiem Mass contain ecstatic praise, while the second points toward by composers such as Mozart, Cherubini, the vernacular was also sanctioned as part of its most essential prayer. Perhaps nowhere the more introspective mood of the second Berlioz, Verdi or Fauré. We usually encounter these reforms. are our profoundest hopes for the departed Clarke setting, A Crowd of Cares. Here, organ them in concert performances rather than in more succinctly and beautifully expressed, joins with cello to act as a musical bridge their original context as part of a funeral mass, Yet the requiem genre had already moved in language rich with metaphor. ‘Eternal rest’ between sacred and secular texts – between where their functions included interceding on from the church to the concert hall much here is no mere slumber, but rather the full the collective sentiment of a choir and the behalf of the dead, providing consolation for earlier. Mozart’s (and Süssmayr’s) setting attainment of God’s inheritance after the solitary reflection of a soloist. The choir returns the bereaved and also (certainly in the cases may have been the first one to be performed toils of life; ‘perpetual light’ signifies all the a cappella in the Agnus Dei; when the cello of Cherubini, Berlioz and Verdi) celebrating the outside a church when it featured in a benefit good that flows from God. Yet at their core, rejoins, it is increasingly emboldened and memory of famous and important deceased. concert for the composer’s widow and these words convey a simple and universal expressive, pushing through the expanding As members of a concert audience we are children in 1793, while those by Cherubini message: rest in peace. choral texture and emerging above it. invited to consider the meaning of death in (his Requiem in C minor), Berlioz and Verdi more general ways, whether or not we are were premiered as part of a sacred ceremony Encapsulating all that follows, these are the The Year’s Midnight, in its textual ascent personally affected by the loss of a loved one yet then moved straight into the secular only lines of text I set in my own Requiem’s from earth to sky, from falling leaves to a at the time. Hence we can appreciate the sphere. Dvořák’s setting for the Birmingham Introit. This opening movement begins in rainbow, acts as a fitting prelude to the final aestheticisation and sublimation provided by Music Festival (premiered in 1891) may be darkness, gradually coming into focus through two movements, which appeal again for rest texts and music differently, not reacting on the first requiem by a ‘major’ composer the cello’s opening solo and in the choral and then for angels to lead the departed into the basis of an immediate emotional need but written for immediate use in the concert hall. entries which follow. The Kyrie’s appeal paradise. By invoking the language of The Fall to adopting a broader, more reflective viewpoint. With this secularisation of the genre came for mercy then runs the gamut of emotion, refer no longer to a ‘fall from grace’ but rather a greater freedom to ‘play’ with the text. beginning as an urgent plea and ending as to a natural cycle of renewal, this movement This broader perspective might be considered While leaving out certain sections had always solemn prayer. advances the despair-to-hope, sin-to-redemption part of the modern definition of a requiem: a been common (after all, whatever was not narrative which I hope permeates the work piece of music that engages with death while composed would still be represented by Where a ‘Dies irae’ might be expected, I as a whole. The entirely a cappella Pie Jesu retaining some – if sometimes rather distant Gregorian chant during the mass), composers instead offer the first of three settings of which follows sees the choir at both its most – link to the ‘traditional’ requiem genre. Of now started moving words around, adding poems by Gillian Clarke. The Fall describes a prayerful and – later – its most ecstatic, as the course, from the point of view of the Roman new texts (even to the point of replacing different ‘day of wrath’ – September 11, 2001. homophonic texture eventually shatters into Catholic liturgy any piece that does not the liturgical texts entirely) and also turning For Clarke’s combination of a very human intense, rhythmically free declamation. Finally, restrict itself to the liturgical text would not to languages other than Latin. Brahms’s immediacy with powerful religious allegory, we In Paradisum surveys much of the music that be regarded as suitable to feature in a funeral Ein deutsches Requiem (1868), with its enter the more intimate sound-world of solo has preceded it, until – recalling the very first mass. This is complicated further by the fact non-liturgical German text, probably marked tenor, cello and piano. The Offertorywhich choral entry of the Introit – it weaves its own that the traditional text was in fact altered a breakthrough for this approach. Despite follows becomes almost a response to Clarke’s course upwards, toward that perpetual light. in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, its title it would not have been regarded as words, its appeal that the departed ‘fall not into when several sections – particularly those a ‘genuine’ requiem by most listeners at the darkness’ acquiring new significance. © 2020 Alex Woolf (such as the ‘Dies irae’ sequence) highlighting time, whereas today, most of us have no The requiem in history and today problem accepting it as one. This is because aeternam’ excludes the psalm verses and the way. Woolf unites the two spheres by means Fauré’s Requiem (or that by Maurice Duruflé, the twentieth century has dissolved generic repeat of the antiphon; the Offertory omits of the solo cello that features in both worlds, who was in turn influenced by Fauré). Their norms; nowadays a piece of music can be both the ‘Sed signifer sanctus Michael’ and directly interacting with the vocal parts in an requiems are intended to be suitable for called symphony, string quartet or requiem the ‘Hostias’ sections; the ‘In Paradisum’ often responsorial or imitative way. liturgical use, avoiding the use of orchestras without having to display any of the structural dispenses with two lines of text; while in the and elaborate vocal solo parts that would or functional features hitherto associated with Agnus Dei there is no ‘sempiternam’ added to However, there are also significant differences restrict performances to professional these genres – except their title. Yet the latter the final repetition of the plea to the lamb of between the two works: Britten uses Owen’s concert situations. Woolf’s Requiem is crucial: it ensures that even if there is no God. Conversely, Woolf includes three recent poetry to critique the positions expressed in the expects professionals in both the solo and reference to the ‘original’ generic traditions, poems by Gillian Clarke; these counterpoint the liturgical texts, and the vivid depictions of the hell accompanimental parts, but his musical style a listener’s reception will be guided by his liturgical text with a more modern reflection on on earth that was trench warfare contrast often is accessible and engaging. In the omission or her knowledge of the norms represented dying and loss. brutally with the hope and consolation offered of the ‘Dies irae’ and the inclusion of the ‘In by most of the canonic requiems which – by many of the Latin words. Gillian Clarke’s Paradisum’ (which is part of the Office of the despite being centuries old – still dominate In its structure the work invites comparison poems also interact directly with the Latin texts Dead yet not the Mass for the Dead proper, the concert and recording scene.

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