All Souls' Day Requiem Concerts As Civil Rituals

ALL SOULS’ DAY REQUIEM CONCERTS AS CIVIL RITUALS

1. Introduction

In 2006 Peter Jan Margry, employed by The Meertens Institute (Amster- dam), wrote an article on the ‘Stille Omgang’, a sacramental procession held every year in Amsterdam.1 He treats the ‘Stille Omgang’ as an expression of civil religion and a manifestation of Dutch identity. I quote:

Collective public manifestations indicated as ‘silent processions’ or ‘silent marches’ are phenomena that have become (...) generally accepted Dutch customs. In the genesis of this phenomenon, the Amsterdam ‘Stille Omgang’ played a decisive role. It served as an example that was copied and that has acquired a place as a prototype in the national celebration and commemoration culture.2

In my own research, I focus on Requiem concerts, performed in the nd fall, more specifically around the date of November 2 , All Souls’ Day. The article by Peter Jan Margry encouraged me to investigate the Requiem concerts as rituals which, it is true, have a religious, Roman Catholic background, but which nowadays are embedded in our culture and are widely accepted as civil rituals to commemorate the deceased, by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Margry investigates the history of the ‘Stille Omgang’ from the sixteenth century onwards to the silent marches of our times. In my approach to the Requiem concerts I will describe three relat-

1. Peter Jan Margry, “Stille omgang als civil religion: Een manifestatie van Nederlandse identiteit,” Identiteit en spiritualiteit van de Amsterdamse Stille Omgang, ed. Charles Caspers and Peter Jan Margry (Hilversum: Verloren, 2006) 41-84. 2. Ibid., 41: “Collectieve publieke manifestaties die met ‘stille omgang’ of ‘stille tocht’ worden aangeduid, zijn (…) in hun verschijningsvorm een algemeen en geaccep- teerd Nederlands gebruik geworden. De Amsterdamse Stille Omgang heeft bij de genese van dit fenomeen een bepalende rol gespeeld. Door de voorbeeldwerking die ervan uit- ging heeft dit verschijnsel zich als het ware vermenigvuldigd en heeft het zich een plaats als prototype in de nationale vierings- en herdenkingscultuur verworven.” Translation Hans Verhulst. All Soul’s Day Requiem Concerts as Civil Rituals 331 ed phenomena without suggesting there being strong causal relation or a direct historical development from one to the other. I will start by focus- ing on the musical rituals associated with All Souls’ Day from the early Middle Ages up to the first half of the twentieth century. Subsequently, I will describe the function of the Requiem, a function that underwent a significant change in the nineteenth century. Finally, I will briefly go into the ritualization of concerts for the purpose of drawing large audiences. The main thesis of this article is that singing the Requiem (Gregorian chant, or a polyphonic composition) has become a cultural and widely accepted ritual which has lost its exclusive association with the Roman Catholic doctrine and instead is felt to be a general part of Dutch cultural heritage. This old Christian, musical-ritual form has become a commemoration ritual in which everyone, believers and non-believers alike, can participate. I will describe and analyze this development using the religious studies concepts of civil ritual and civil religion, and I will pay less attention to other perspectives which are dealt with in memory studies and death studies. This article is structured in four parts. After this introduction (1.), I will describe the rise of the All Souls’ Day Requiem concerts in the past ten years in the Netherlands (2.). Next, I will describe the three phenomena mentioned above that are related to the emergence of the Requiem concerts as part of our culture (3.). After this I will briefly go into the theories of civil ritual and civil religion and I will conclude with a reflec- tion on the Requiem concerts as civil ritual (4.).3

2. Requiem Concerts in the 21st Century

In the past eight to ten years, there has been a marked revival of All Souls’ Day celebrations in the Netherlands. This revival has been the subject of extensive descriptions and analyses by members of the Centre for Thana- tology (Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands), in particular Eric Venbrux, William Arfman and Thomas Quartier.4 They have, among

3. I thank the (anonymous) reviewers for their useful comments on a previous version of this article. I also thank my colleague Hans Verhulst for correcting the English text. 4. Eric Venbrux, “New Identity of All Souls’ Day Celebrations in the Netherlands: Extra-ecclesiastic commemoration of the dead, art, and religiosity,” Emotion, Identity and Death: Mortality across Disciplines, ed. Douglas James Davies and Chang-Won Park (Farnham, Surrey / Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012) 161-173. Thomas Quartier, “Mourning Rituals – Between Faith and Personalisation: Changing Ritual Repertoires on All Souls Day in the Netherlands,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 10 (2010) 334-350; Thomas Quartier, et al., “Kreatives Totengedenken: Rituelle Erinnerungsräume in einem niederländischen Kunstprojekt,” Jaarboek voor liturgie- onderzoek / Yearbook for Liturgical and Ritual Studies 24 (2008) 155-176. William 332 Martin Hoondert other things, analyzed All Souls’ celebrations organized by cemeteries, involving artworks that help people to commemorate the dead. Venbrux and Quartier carried out a survey among participants in the project ‘All Souls Everywhere’ (Allerzielen Alom, www.allerzielenalom.nl), initiated by the artist Ida van der Lee.5 Since its initialization in 2005 by Ida van der Lee, the ‘All Souls everywhere’ project has spread throughout the Netherlands. In 2007, it saw five performances in the province of North Holland; the next year there were 10, spread all over the country, and in 2009 ‘All Souls everywhere’ cele- 6 brations were held at as many as 21 locations. The success of this project drew the attention of researchers who subsequently focused on it with con- vincing results. There is, however, one characteristic of the newly devel- oped All Souls’ Day ritual that they overlooked, namely the Requiem con- 7 certs. In short, we can say that the ‘All Souls everywhere’ project is closely affiliated to the tradition of visiting the graves as part of the Roman 8 Catholic feast. The Requiem concerts, on the other hand, are more closely linked to the liturgy of All Souls’ Day, as we shall see in the third part of 9 this article. The name of these concerts refers to All Souls’ Day or the Requiem, even if no Requiem composition is programmed. As far as I have been able to find out through online research on the In- ternet and interviews with concert organizers and conductors, the first Requiem concert took place in Nijmegen in 2004 under the direction of 10 Sophia Brink. Each year she puts together a project choir that sings parts of Requiem compositions and short songs around the themes of sorrow, death and consolation. A year later, in 2005, a tradition of Requiem con-

Arfman, “Innovating from Traditions: The Emergence of a Ritual Field of Collective Commemoration in the Netherlands,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 28 (2013) forthcoming. 5. See also: Ida van der Lee, Allerzielen Alom: Kunst tot herdenken (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2008); id., De muze van het herdenken: Vijf jaar Allerzielen Alom (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2010). 6. Venbrux, “New Identity of All Souls’ Day Celebrations in the Netherlands,” 165. Lee, De muze van het herdenken, 88-91. 7. Besides the Requiem concerts and ‘All Souls everywhere’ there are other initiatives to collectively commemorate the dead. See Berber Bijma, Herinnering aan alle zielen: Nieuwe rituelen om de doden te herdenken (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2007) 96-123. 8. Jürgen Bärsch, Allerseelen: Studien zu Liturgie und Brauchtum eines Totengedenktages in der abendländischen Kirche, Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen, 90 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2004) 194-218. 9. For the connection between the Requiem mass inside the church and the outdoor ritual on the graveyard, see: Paul Post, “Religious Popular Culture and Liturgy: An Illustrated Argument for an Approach,” Religion populaire, liturgie et évangélisation / Popular Religion, Liturgy and Evangelization, ed. Jozef Lamberts, Textes et études liturgiques / Studies in Liturgy, 15 (Leuven: Peeters, 1998) 15-59. Here pp. 42-47. 10. E-mail to the author, October 29, 2012. All Soul’s Day Requiem Concerts as Civil Rituals 333 certs was started in Lochem, entitled ‘Requiem for…’ (Requiem voor…). These concerts are part of the annual programming of Capella Amster- dam under the direction of Daniel Reuss. Each year the concert starts with one part of the Gregorian Requiem mass, the office for the dead or another medieval unison chant. The music is interspersed with poetry or instrumental music, and in some years the Saint Gudula church of Lochem is decorated with objects of art.11 In 2012 and 2013, people were offered the opportunity to combine the Requiem concert with a dinner in one of the Lochem restaurants or with an overnight-stay, breakfast and dinner in one of the hotels. In 2010, a yearly tradition of Requiem concerts was started in ’s-Hertogenbosch. Without exaggeration, this can rightly be called the invention of a tradition:12 it breathes new life into the custom of the ‘Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap’, a fraternity founded in the fourteenth century around the devotion to the Holy Virgin Mary, to commemorate its deceased brothers on the Saturday after All Souls’ Day.13 Actually, these revitalized concerts are dedicated to one of the most famous members of the fraternity, the painter Jheronimus Bosch (circa 1450-1516), the 500th anniversary of whose death will be commemorated in 2016. The regional newspaper Brabants Dagblad reported the huge amount of interest for the 2012 performance of the Bosch Requiem: “The churches are empty, but Saturday evening ’s-Hertogenbosch’s St John’s cathedral was filled to capacity with people who came to listen to the Bosch Requiem.”14 In November 2013, a new Requiem was performed, composed by the Dutch composer Robert Zuidam. In 2012, to mention just a few, other Requiem concerts were organized in Nieuw-Vennep (Duruflé, Requiem; Purcell, Funeral Music for Queen Mary), Maastricht (four late Romantic compositions, played by a symphony orchestra), Tilburg (Fauré, Requiem), Tilburg/Abbey Konings- hoeven (Fiumara, Lamento; Brahms, Ein Deutsches Requiem), Utrecht (Fauré, Requiem), Heeswijk (Rutter, Requiem), Leiden (Brahms, Ein Deutsches Requiem), Amsterdam (Verdi, Requiem and Stabat Mater).15 In Venlo, the Prisma Foundation organized a commemoration program

11. Interview with Gerthe Lamers and Rommie Hulsinga, 26 October 2012. 12. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 13. Véronique Roelvink, Antoine Bodar, and Mark van de Voort, Bosch Requiem 2010 (’s-Hertogenbosch: Wolfaert Uitgevers, 2010) 5, 10. 14. “De kerken lopen leeg, maar zaterdag avond (sic) was de Bossche Sint-Jan goed gevuld met mensen die naar het Bosch Requiem kwamen luisteren.” Mieske van Eck in Brabants Dagblad, November 5, 2012, p. 12. 15. Information derived from several websites, see for instance www.zinweb.nl/zinlog > archief > oktober 2012 > 14 oktober 2012: Troostende Allerzielenconcerten. 334 Martin Hoondert entitled ‘Night of the Souls’16 and in Amsterdam in the arts centre ‘De Nieuwe Liefde’ a meditative evening with music and poetry took place. A remarkable initiative is the ‘All Souls sing along concerts’ (Allerzielen meezingconcerten) in Utrecht, organized for the seventh time in 2012.17 Commemoration concerts are also organized by hospitals18 and crematories in co-operation with local undertakers. The national Catholic Radio Network (KRO / Katholieke Radio Omroep) organized a commemoration concert in the Dominican Abbey in Huissen on November 1, 2012 and released a 4 CD box with ‘consoling music’. And last but not least, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam) started a series of annual Requiem concerts (entitled: Requiem Ritual) in 2011. A quote from Preludium magazine:

People bring their own interpretation to a tradition, and focus on what they consider a dramatic loss in their own environment. A requiem can be beneficial and bring peace and convert the loss to acceptance. In traditions, the orchestra can anchor beauty as part of people’s lives and con- nect the people in the audience. The church is empty, but the concert hall is full.19

It is remarkable, however, that the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra programs this Requiem Ritual ever year in September.

3. Music for All Souls’ Day, the Requiem and the Ritualization of Concerts

In this section I will describe three phenomena which account for the rise and the increasing popularity of the contemporary practice of All Souls’ Day Requiem concerts. Obviously, I will focus on the musical aspects of these phenomena.

16. www.nachtderzielen.nl. 17. www.meezingconcerten.nl. 18. See for example www.jbz.nl/concerten. 19. M. Biermans, “Requiemritueel,” Preludium 70 (2011) 1, 33: “Iedereen kan een eigen invulling aan een traditie geven, en stilstaan bij wat er in zijn of haar omgeving aan dramatisch verlies is. Een requiem kan heilzaam zijn en rust brengen en het verlies omzet- ten naar acceptatie. Het orkest kan met tradities schoonheid als deel van iemands leven verankeren en het publiek verbinden. De kerk loopt leeg, maar de concertzaal loopt vol.” Translation Hans Verhulst. All Soul’s Day Requiem Concerts as Civil Rituals 335

3.1. Music and All Souls’ Day: A Historical Overview

In Western Christianity, All Souls’ Day, also known as the Commemora- tion of All Faithful Departed, originated in the late 10th century. Especial- ly in monastic communities affiliated to the Abbey of Cluny, the annual commemoration of the dead was encouraged. According to the he pious legend, abbot Odilo of Cluny instituted this annual commemoration in 998.20 The genesis of All Souls’ Day reflects the rise of Purgatory in the- ological writings. Celebrating a Requiem mass on All Souls’ Day was to ease the stay of the deceased in Purgatory. In the fourteenth century, All Souls’ Day services became generally accepted throughout the Roman Catholic Church.21 Several developments in the history of All Souls’ Day liturgy and spirituality stressed the importance of singing the Requiem. In the late Middle Ages, the celebration of All Souls’ Day consisted of four elements: the chiming of the church bells, the office for the dead (in particular vespers and matins and lauds), the Requiem mass and the procession to the graveyard.22 These four elements can be considered as musical rituals. The ringing of the bells served an informative function, inviting people to take part, as well as a symbolic-performative one: it heralded the vespers and was also meant to dispel evil forces.23 In the vespers, the psalms were not concluded with the common doxology, but with the verses Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat ei. And in the libri ordinarii, the prescribed performance is to sing the office alta voce (loud), which indicates the festive character of the liturgical commemoration. Other sources prescribe singing leniter (softly) or morosius (slowly), which points to the sorrow concerning the fate of the souls in Purgatory.24 The procession liturgy, including a blessing of the graves, was also provided with songs (psalms and responsories).25 In popular piety, the most important way to ease the fate of the souls in Purgatory was to celebrate mass. Bärsch writes:

In der volksfrommen Sorge der mittelalterlichen Menschen um das Schicksal der Armen Seelen im Fegefeuer spielte (…) die Feier des

20. Bärsch, Allerseelen, 79-114. I strongly rely on the solid study by Bärsch. See also the studies mentioned in note 4 and Lucas Brinkhoff, W. de Wolf, and F. L. Brinkhof (eds.), Liturgisch woordenboek (Roermond: Romen, 1958) part I, 102-103. 21. Bärsch, Allerseelen, 136. 22. Ibid., 154-241. 23. Ibid., 424-425. 24. Ibid., 154, 169, 171. 25. Ibid., 210-218, also 382-386. 336 Martin Hoondert

Messopfers eine herausragende Rolle. In ihr sah man das wirksamste Mit- tel zur strafmildernden Hilfe im Jenseits (…).26

For the mass on All Souls’ Day, the chants that were used were the same as those used at burials of individuals and at commemorations after a certain period of days (e.g., 40 days). In short, the proprium and ordinarium of the All Souls’ Day mass consist of the chants of the Requiem mass, but in the Middle Ages the chants for this mass were not fixed, although most 27 libri ordinarii do indicate Requiem aeternam as the introit antiphon. The most extensive variation can be found in the chants around the lectures. As Gradual the sources mention Si ambulem in medio umbrae mortis or Requiem aeternam. As Tract we encounter Sicus cervus desiderat, De profundis, or Absolve Domine. The sequence Dies irae became part of the Requiem mass in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries.28 Bärsch mentions that the sequence is absent in the late medieval sources he has examined. “Es muss also vermutet werden, dass der Brauch, in der Totenmesse an Allerseelen einen solchen Gesang anzustimmen, erst selten geübt wurde.”29 Most sources mention Domine Iesu Christe as the offertory, and Lux aeterna as communion. It was in the Tridentine Roman Missal (1570) that the chants of the Requiem mass were fixed. From that moment on, the Dies irae was officially recognized as part of the Requiem.30 This tells us a lot about the way people dealt with death in the Middle Ages and beyond, as Bärsch writes:

Das vielleicht prägendste Gesangstück der Totenmesse im tridentinischen Messbuch dürfte die Sequenz darstellen. Das Dies irae schildert in packender Eindringlichkeit den Schrecken des Sünders vor dem göttli- chen Tribunal. (…) hat diese Sequenz mit ihren starken eschatologischen Bildern nachhaltig die Gesamtatmosphäre der tridentinischen Totenlitur- gie und damit auch der Feier der Allerseelenmemoria bestimmt.31

The Dies irae, with its characteristic melody, was a poetic and musical expression of the fear of death and judgment. The increasing ritualiz- ing of All Souls’ Day from the seventeenth century onwards was a way

26. Ibid., 218. 27. Ibid., 230-237. 28. Martin Hoondert, “De dag des oordeels. Het Dies irae,” Hemel en hel: Beelden van het hiernamaals in het westers christendom, ed. Frank G. Bosman (Heeswijk: Uitgeverij Abdij van Berne, 2012) 105-121. 29. Bärsch, Allerseelen, 235. 30. After the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Dies irae was deleted from the Gregorian Requiem. In many modern Requiems, however, not composed for the liturgy, the Dies irae can still be found. 31. Bärsch, Allerseelen, 277-278. All Soul’s Day Requiem Concerts as Civil Rituals 337 of coping with this fear. In around 1600 in Spain and Portugal the custom emerged to celebrate three masses on November 2nd. It was not until 1915, however, that pope Benedict XV († 1922) promulgated the Consti- tution Incruentum altaris sacrificium, in which he allowed the priests of the Latin church to celebrate three masses on All Souls’ Day.32 The background behind this development is the major concern for the ‘poor souls’. In popular piety, the care for the dead through prayer, participa- tion in the mass and other ritual actions was deeply rooted. The first of the three masses on All Souls’ Day was celebrated for a particular inten- tion for which a stipend was paid (Latin: stipendium ad intentionem dantis). The second was celebrated for the intentions of the Pope (Latin: ad mentem Summi Pontificis), the third for all the deceased (Latin: pro omnibus defunctis).33 The commonly used Liber Usualis prescribes the Requiem for all three masses, but I doubt whether this requirement was implemented in practice.34 It is more likely that the first two masses were read (Latin: missa lecta) and that only the third one was sung.35 It is important to mention that it was customary to go to the church building several times on All Souls’ Day. In Dutch, this habit is called ‘portiunkelen’ after Portiuncula, the little Franciscan church in Assisi (Italy).36 Visiting Portiuncula was a way to earn indulgences; later on, this custom was transferred to all churches and confined to special days. The Requiem was not only sung during the funeral liturgy, during commemorations of individuals deceased, and the liturgy of All Souls’ Day, but was also part of the personal prayers. Some books of hours, from the fourteenth century onwards, besides the death office, also include the Requiem mass. Perhaps the text of the Requiem was included to enable the owner of the book of hours to follow the mass. But use for personal devotion is not excluded.37

32. Ibid., 280-284. 33. W. Grosam, “Applikation der drei heiligen Messen zu Allerseelen,” Theologisch- Praktische Quartalschrift 87 (1934) 804-806. 34. Liber usualis missae et officii pro dominicis et festis cum cantu gregoriano ex ed. Vaticana adamussim excerpto et rhythmicis signis in subsidium cantorum a Solesmensibus monachis diligenter ornato (Parisiis, 1962) 1806. First publication: 1896 / 1903. See: Martin Hoondert, Gregoriaans in de steigers: Restauratie en verspreiding aan het begin van de twintigste eeuw, Kerkmuziek en Liturgie, 11 (Utrecht / Kampen: Hogeschool voor de Kunsten / Gooi en Sticht, 2003) 34-52. 35. Information retrieved from em. prof. dr. A. Vernooij, e-mail to the author, January 12, 2013. 36. Joris van Eijnatten and Fred van Lieburg, Nederlandse religiegeschiedenis (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005) 193. 37. Gabriele Bartz and Eberhard König, “Die Illustration des Totenoffiziums in Stundenbüchern,” Im Angesicht des Todes: Ein interdisziplinäres Kompendium, ed. Hansjakob Becker, Bernhard Einig, and Peter-Otto Ullrich, Pietas Liturgica, 3 (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1987) I, 487-528. Here p. 496. 338 Martin Hoondert

A last sign of care for the dead in relation to liturgy and the Requiem is the foundation of the Fraternities of the Blessed Death in the seventeenth century by the Jesuits.38 Members of these fraternities were obliged to accompany the dead and to attend the funeral mass. Besides this, Requiem masses were celebrated for deceased members. Also on special days, an example being March 19th, the commemoration day of St. Joseph, patron of a blessed death, the members of the fraternity celebrated a Requiem mass.39 The increasing attention paid in liturgical life to the devotion to the dead and the fate of the dead resulted in the Requiem becoming an often- heard musical ritual. The care of the dead through prayers, attending Requiem masses and visiting the graves became deeply rooted in West- ern societies.

3.2. The Requiem as Music for Collective Commemoration

The original liturgical function of the Requiem was intercession on be- half of the dead. This changed in the nineteenth century. We can observe four major changes taking place in this century. First, there was a transfer from the church building to the concert hall. Mozart’s Requiem (1791) may have been the first that that was performed as a concert outside a church when Baron Van Swieten organized its performance for the bene- fit of the composer’s widow and children in January 1793 in Vienna.40 Later Requiem compositions, for example those by Berlioz (1837), Verdi (1874), Britten (1962), Ligeti (1965), Penderecki (1980) and Webber (1984) were composed for the concert hall, not for the church.41 Second- ly, the transfer from the church building to the concert hall gave composers leeway to abandon the prescribed Latin texts and to draw up their own Requiem text. We find composers leaving out parts of the Latin texts (e.g. Fauré, Duruflé), using texts from other sources (e.g., Schütz, Brahms), or combining the Latin texts with texts from other sources (e.g. Britten, Jenkins).42 Thirdly, many new Requiem compositions no longer focused on the death of a particular individual. Instead, they were com-

38. F. van Hoeck, Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezuieten in Nederland (Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1940) 162. Alfons Thijs, Van Geuzenstad tot katholiek bolwerk: Maatschappelijke betekenis van de kerk in contrareformatorisch Antwerpen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990) 88. 39. Korte verklaaring van het Broederschap van de Zalige Dood en de processie van Scherpenheuvel (Breda: Hermans, 1855). 40. C. Wolff, Mozarts requiem (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991) 11. 41. Pieter Bergé (ed.), Dies Irae. Kroniek van het requiem (Leuven: University Press, 2011). 42. Ibid., 192-193. All Soul’s Day Requiem Concerts as Civil Rituals 339 posed to commemorate the death of many, or in the case of Johannes Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem (1865-1868) to console the living. Hector Berlioz’s Requiem (1837) was initially commissioned to commemorate the victims of the French July Revolution in 1830, yet later was premièred during a commemoration of the French that were killed in a colonial battle 43 in Algeria. Frederick Delius dedicated his Requiem (1913-1916) to the memory of all young artists fallen in the First World War and Dimitri Kabalewski to the Russian victims of the ‘Great National War’ (1962).44 In his article on the Requiem in the twentieth century, Wolfgang Marx asserts that most of the important and regularly performed Requiem compositions since about the First World War focus on the death of many, caused by human activities such as war, genocide or terror. “The composers thus emphasize political or societal wrongs. Up to a point, these works are meant to educate as much as to entertain, comfort and commemorate.”45 Fourthly, due to the changes in venue, text and focus, the religious connotation has faded, religious appropriation is just one of the options.46

3.3. The Ritualization of Concerts

Nowadays, concert halls and ensembles are in search of new audiences. One of the means to reach new audiences is to ritualize the concerts, in other words: to link the concert to a special moment with which religious, domestic or societal rituals are connected. Musical performances linked to special moments in the year draw large audiences. These special moments often have a religious background. In this respect, Christmas concerts and performances of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Lent come to mind. But we can also say that programmers seek to mark the seasons: Christmas carols in winter,47 Passion compositions in spring,48 festivals (pop and rock music, early music, etc.)49 in summer, the Requiem in autumn. In announcements and programs, the Requiem, besides its obvious

43. Wolfgang Marx, “‘Requiem sempiternam’? Death and the Musical Requiem in the Twentieth Century,” Mortality 17, no. 2 (2012) 119-129. Here p. 120. 44. Bergé, Kroniek van het requiem, 194. 45. Marx, “Death and the Musical Requiem,” 119. 46. Bergé, Kroniek van het requiem, 194. 47. Hanna Rijken, “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols: Een Engelse traditie in Nederland,” Gregoriusblad 136, no. 4 (2012) 24-27. 48. Jan Luth, “‘Naar de Mattheus’: Over de populariteit van een Nederlands ritueel,” Religie en cultuur in hedendaags Nederland: Observaties en interpretaties, ed. Justin Kroesen, Yme Kuiper, and Pieter Nanninga (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2010) 22-27. 49. Zie www.festivalinfo.nl. An example is the Holland Festival, see: Jessica Voeten (ed.), Een Nederlands wonder: Vijftig jaar Holland festival (Amsterdam: Walburg; Stichting Holland Festival, 1997). 340 Martin Hoondert link to the dead and All Souls’ Day, is linked to leaves falling and nature dying. At one of the Requiem concerts mentioned in section 2 of this article, the concert in the Koningshoeven Abbey (Tilburg), the main in- centive to organize a Requiem concert was the simple fact that in autumn the number of concerts is relatively low.50 By linking a concert to the liturgical calendar, it is framed as part of our cultural heritage. As generations before us went to the church and the graveyard on All Souls’ Day, people in our time consciously or uncon- sciously continue this custom by attending a Requiem concert. The link between a concert and the liturgical calendar might activate our cultural memory. According to Jan Assmann, cultural memory concerns events in a distant past, which extends a society’s ability to remember far beyond the limitations of what he calls the ‘communicative memory’. For Assmann, tradition is central to the concept of cultural memory, which is: “(…) a system of memory sites, a system of markers that enables the individual who lives in this tradition to belong, that is, to realize his po- tential as the member of a society in the sense of a community where it is possible to learn, remember, and to share in culture.”51 The concert be- comes a lieu de mémoire, where old traditions are kept alive, against slipping our minds.52 It is the special (liturgical or seasonal) moment that prompts the programming: in spring, we expect to be able to hear the St. Matthew Pas- sion in the weeks preceding Easter, although, I have to admit, the Bach’s Passions are increasingly being programmed in other periods of the year as well. In addition to our expectations, which prompt us to go to concerts, the ritualization of the concert provides an extra reason for attending. This is especially clear in the case of the Requiem concerts: in addition to wanting to experience the music on a personal, aesthetic level, part of the audience will also go to these concerts because they want to commemorate a beloved person who has passed away. So besides the aesthetic stimulus that makes us want to listen to beautiful music, there is also a ritual stimulus.

4. Requiem Concerts as Civil Ritual and Civil Religion

As we have seen, the care of the dead is firmly rooted in the Roman Catholic liturgy and devotion, and the Requiem is the musical pendant

50. Interview Daniëlle van Dijk, 21 September 2012. 51. Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory. Ten Studies, translated by Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006) 9. 52. Jos Perry, Wij herdenken, dus wij bestaan: Over jubilea, monumenten en de collectieve herinnering (Nijmegen: SUN, 1999). All Soul’s Day Requiem Concerts as Civil Rituals 341 required to commemorate the deceased. Although many of the All Souls’ Day rituals have dissipated (an example being the gifts for the dead, the All Souls’ Day biscuits),53 and the belief in Purgatory has vanished,54 the sound subsists and is still associated with the commemoration of the dead. In my opinion, the contemporary Requiem concerts in November, to be considered as the All Souls’ month, are the continuation of the Ro- man Catholic liturgy in a new, transformed context, in which the influ- ence of institutionalized religion has declined. Encouraged by the article by Peter Jan Margy that I mentioned in the introduction, I want to reflect on the All Souls’ Day Requiem concerts as a civil ritual. While there is little theory on civil rituals, entire libraries have been written on civil religion, which civil ritual is normally associated with. The latter concept was coined by Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile Durkheim and Robert Bellah. Although civil ritual is undertheorized, I will start with this concept. After that, I will briefly go into the concept of civil religion and reflect on the question whether the All Souls’ Day Requiem concerts are an expression of civil religion.

4.1. Civil Ritual

My colleague Paul Post distinguishes two kinds of civil rituals, which he refers to as ex officio rituals.55 First, there are the rituals of the state, the government, the nation, public and semi-public organizations. These include national rites, commemorations, official funerals, celebrations, the awarding of honors, war memorials, rituals of the court and parliament, and academic rituals. These ex officio rituals are ‘orchestrated’ from the top -down. Catherine Bell specifies these kinds of civil rituals as ‘political rites’ and emphasizes the role they play in the construction of power. Political rites make this power tangible and effective.56 In this first category, the term ‘political’ would actually have been more apt than ‘civil’, because ‘civil’ refers to activities employed by citizens rather than

53. Hermann Kirchhoff, Christliches Brauchtum: Feste und Bräuche im Jahreskreis (München: Kösel, 1995) 194-200. Manfred Becker-Huberti, Feiern – Feste – Jahreszeiten: Lebendige Bräuche im ganzen Jahr: Geschichte und Geschichten, Lieder und Legenden (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1998) 370-372. 54. In Roman Catholic doctrine, Purgatory still exists, see Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992) sections 1020-1032, 1054. In a survey on life after death, Purgatory is not mentioned, see A. P. J. Bernts, G. Dekker, and Joep de Hart, God in Nederland, 1996-2006 (Kampen: Ten Have, 2007) 50-51. 55. Paul Post, “Living memory tussen Zivilreligiös herdenken, kunst, healing en attractie: Over de meervoudige identiteit van een Holocaustmuseum,” Jaarboek voor liturgie-onderzoek 27 (2011) 87-111. Here pp. 104-107. 56. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 128-137. 342 Martin Hoondert the state or the government. One of the drawbacks of Bell’s ‘political rites’ is that they do not include the rituals of organizations like universi- ties. This makes the term ex officio rituals more appropriate, as it is most comprehensive. In Dutch society, political rites are associated mainly with the monarchy, the army, the police force, the court and parliament. Besides this relatively fixed repertoire of rituals, new ex officio rituals are emerging. A good example of ex officio rituals emerging recently in the Dutch context, is the Slavery Monument erected in Amsterdam in 2002, and the ritual repertoire that goes with it.57 A second category of civil rituals consists of rituals that are widely accepted and generally celebrated in our society. Rather than being a top- down affair as is the case with the first category of civil rituals, they are organized from the bottom up. Often, there is an accident or a disaster that gives rise to these rituals, in which case they are performed only once.58 An example is the silent marches after incidents of senseless violence. But there are also certain calendrical rituals that belong in this category. Examples are the yearly plunge on New Year’s Day, the Or- ange madness accompanying European Championships or World Cup matches, street and neighborhood festivals, the feast of St Nicholas. Part of these rituals can be categorized as memorial rituals, others play an important part in establishing Dutch identity and are part of what can be called the ‘immaterial heritage’ of the Netherlands.59 In the case of the calendrical rituals, they are often linked to ecclesiastic rituals that to a large degree have been secularized and commercialized. This is clearly seen at Christmas, where for many buying gifts and indulging in copious meals have become more important than the original religious content. All Souls’ Day, as one of the calendrical rituals, has also been secularized in a certain sense: it has been extracted from the ecclesiastic context and transferred to public, civil space.60 This development says nothing about

57. www.ninsee.nl/Nationaal-slavernijmonument, accessed on January 16, 2013. Johanna C. Kardux, “Slavery, Memory, and Citizenship in Transatlantic Perspective,” American Multiculturalism after 9/11: Transatlantic Perspectives, ed. D. Rubin and J. Verheul (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009) 165-180. Here pp. 170-171. See also: Id., “Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery Memorials in the United States and the Netherlands,” Blackening Europe: The African American Presence, ed. Heike Raphael-Hernandez (New York: Routledge, 2004) 87-105. 58. Examples can be found in Paul Post, et al., Disaster Ritual: Explorations of an Emerging Ritual Repertoire, Liturgia Condenda, 15 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003) chapter 3. 59. See www.traditie.nl and the journal Immaterieel erfgoed of the Dutch Centre for Popular Culture and Immaterial Heritage (Nederlands Centrum voor Volkscultuur en Immaterieel Erfgoed, see www.volkscultuur.nl). In October 2013 All Souls’ Day has been recognized as immaterial heritage (‘Nationale Inventaris Immaterieel Erfgoed’). 60. Donald Weinstein, “Critical Issues in the Study of Civic Religion in Renaissance Florence,” The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974) 265-270. All Soul’s Day Requiem Concerts as Civil Rituals 343 the meanings attributed to this ritual. These may indeed still be connected with notions of sacrality.61 To sum up, three characteristics of civil rituals can be distinguished. First, they are collectively performed, celebrated and experienced. It is not the small group of family and friends that is in charge, but a large group of known and unknown people. This surely is the case with the All Souls’ Day Requiem concerts, which are attended by a varied audience. Secondly, civil rituals take place in the public domain; they are publicly accessible. Often the venue is determined by a monument, or the place itself is monumental. Even in cases where a church building is used as a venue, it still is a ‘public domain’. This often is the case with the Requi- em concerts, although they also take place in the concert hall. The church building, while the Requiem is being performed, is a monumental space accessible to everyone. Thirdly, civil rituals do not express the doctrine or values of one particular religion. They are neutral as far as religion is concerned, which does not preclude them being appropriated by individuals in a religious or spiritual way. The same applies to Requiem concerts: although the Requiem is Christian in origin, it is now listened to without much attention (if any at all) being paid to the doctrinal content. The music is associated with death, grief and consolation. These three characteristics distinguish civil rituals from liturgy in the public space (e.g., processions; the Islamic call to prayer, the adhãn or azan by the muezzin from a minaret) and from rituals like wedding cere- monies in the city hall and funerals at a graveyard or in a crematorium, which are attended by only a small group of people who are acquainted with the bridal couple or the deceased.

4.2. From Civil Rituals to Civil Religion?

In his article on the ‘Stille Omgang’, Peter Jan Margry claims that this silent procession, and even more so its successor, the silent marches held in protest against acts of senseless violence, shows the characteristics of a kind of civil religion.62 The question now is whether it is possible and fruitful to speak of civil religion in the case of the All Souls’ Day Requi- em concerts. As I said before, entire libraries have been written about civil religion. This is not the place to discuss the history of this concept or the critique voiced in reference to it. Instead, I want to confine myself to the three main authors, whose writings have determined the conceptualization of civil religion: Rousseau, Durkheim and Bellah.

61. M. Evans, “The Sacred: Differentiating, Clarifying and Extending Concepts,” Review of Religious Research 45, no. 1 (2003) 32-47. 62. Margry, “Stille omgang als civil religion,” 41, 71-76. 344 Martin Hoondert

Civil religion as a concept was coined by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). In his book Du contrat social (1762) he points at the urgency of a civil religion. Rousseau intended it as a kind of surrogate religion, but one that concerns itself with moral and civic duties to other individuals. Civil religion in the Rousseauian sense is essentially a political religion whose function is to act as the cult of the civic community, and as the pillar of the state.63 Legitimization of the authority of the state is its main function. This conceptualization of civil religion does not apply to the Requiem concerts. The second scholar who elaborated on the notion of civil religion was Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), although he did not mention the concept explicitly. According to Durkheim, in his Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912), ‘civil religion’ is a cultural and social force acting upon the individual; it affirms values that are widely shared. Moral be- liefs, rituals and public festivities reinforce identification with and com- mitment to these values. The function of this civil religion, and of religion in general, is social integration.64 In relation to the All Souls’ Day Requiem concerts the question can be asked which values are shared in these concerts. In 1967, American sociologist Robert Bellah published a famous and widely discussed essay: Civil religion in America.65 According to Bellah, civil religion is “that religious dimension found in the life of every people through which it interprets its historical experience in the light of trans- cendent reality.”66 His understanding of civil religion is Christian in origin, with a substantive image of God, and based on the American treatment of religion in the public domain, transcending denominational or religious differences. One of the problems, signaled in the decades after Bellah’s 1967 essay, is his point of departure: the nation as a unity, a people sharing a common religious heritage and a common destiny and purpose. Conflicts, exclusion and conflicting interests are beyond his notion of civil religion, which is deeply influenced by the Durkheimian functionalist approach, aiming at the integration of society. This critique urges us to contextualize the concept of civil religion and to examine its applicability in late- or postmodern Dutch society. The question is whether the concept of civil religion is not unduly burdened by its history. Is it still usable and what is its content in a society that is highly fragmented and where relationships are always changing? In my opinion, in late- or postmodern Dutch society, the concept of

63. Marcela Cristi, From Civil to Political Religion: The Intersection of Culture, Religion and Politics (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001) 17-27. 64. Ibid., 30-40. 65. Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96, no. 1 (1967) 1-21. 66. Cited from Cristi, From Civil to Political Religion, 56. All Soul’s Day Requiem Concerts as Civil Rituals 345 civil religion is applicable solely if we dispense with (1.) the idea that it has to integrate a whole nation, (2.) a substantive definition of religion and (3.) the notion of membership in one type of collectivity.67 In my opinion, a much more fruitful approach is the definition of civil religion as ‘Sinnhorizont’, as it is used by both Dutch philosopher of law B.C. Labuschagne, and Flemish academic and politician Rik Torfs.68 This coincides with the Durkheimian notion that civil religion affirms values that are widely shared. To find out what these shared values are we should focus on the performative expressions of the civil religion: the civil rituals. Through ethnographic research on civil rituals, we are able to track down these values. Civil religion, as far as Dutch society is concerned, is the sum of the widely shared values, and as such it is a theoretical and rhetorical phenomenon rather than a readily identifiable one. Actually, this is what Labuschagne asserts while pointing at civil religion as a heuristic concept:

Civil religion as a theory is mainly a heuristic concept to identify phenomena that constitute the civil society’s horizon of the meaning of life. These phenomena are part of society’s political culture, concerned with corporate questions of meaning and corporate Letztbegründungsfragen.69

It is in relation to these collective Letztbegründungsfragen that the All Souls’ Day Requiem concerts function in our culture. They fulfill the wish to commemorate the deceased and to reflect on questions surround- ing death and the afterlife. According to Labuschagne, civil religion - and I would say: civil rituals as the performative and traceable expression of this rather theoretical phenomenon – comes up in relation to three societal problems: integration (“How can, with such a diversity of roles, ideas and interests, society be seen and experienced as a unity?”70), legitimiza-

67. Ibid., 65; P. Luchau, “Toward a Contextualized Concept of Civil Religion,” Social Compass 56, no. 3 (2009) 371-386. 68. Rik Torfs, “Zivilreligion in Belgien und den Niederlanden,” Theologische Quartalschrift 183 (2003) 148-166; B. C. Labuschagne, “Transcendentie, recht en staat: De vergeten dimensies van civiele religie en politieke theologie,” Religie als bron van sociale cohesie in de democratische rechtsstaat? Godsdienst, overheid en civiele religie in een post-geseculariseerde samenleving, ed. B. C. Labuschagne (Nijmegen: Ars Aequi Libri, 2004) 97-118. 69. Labuschagne, “Transcendentie, recht en staat,” 99: “Civiele religie is als theorie voornamelijk een heuristisch begrip, waarmee verschijnselen geïdentificeerd kunnen worden die de zinhorizon van de civil society constitueren, en die tegelijkertijd onderdeel vormen van de politieke cultuur in de samenleving waarin het gaat om collectieve zin- vragen en collectieve Letztbegründungsfragen.” Translation Hans Verhulst. 70. Ibid., 100. 346 Martin Hoondert tion of the authority of the state,71 and identity (“The increased autonomy and the far-reaching individualization have led to a greater sense of alien- ation.”72). The first two societal problems we recognize as being put for- ward by Durkheim and Rousseau, the third in particular is linked to the process of individualization in our late- or postmodern society. In our society, the collective answers to questions about death and the afterlife have lost their value. But death is part of the condition humaine, is part of our identity. People still search for places, moments and rituals that give them the opportunity to reflect on these questions. One of these rituals is the All Souls’ Day Requiem concert, which despite its Christian origin functions as a civil ritual: organized in bottom-up fashion, religiously neutralized and collectively celebrated in the public domain. In line with Durkheim, it is worth asking which values are widely shared in the Requiem concerts. In medieval and early modern societies, the All Souls’ Day rituals served to confine the fear of death and to gath- er the living and the dead in one community through prayer and other ritual activities. The shared value was the care of the dead, even beyond the boundaries of the visible reality. In my opinion, the contemporary Requiem concerts do not have such clear functions, based on a shared value. The audiences at these concerts are too diverse for that, their mo- tives for attending the Requiems are too varied to draw such a conclu- sion. What is shared is, metaphorically speaking, the musical space of the Requiem, which is hermeneutically open to remembrance, grief, relief, consolation etc. The fact that the Requiem concert allows room for all the diverse questions and emotions that surround death can be considered as a shared value.73

Tilburg School of Humanities Martin HOONDERT P.O. Box 90153 NL-5000 LE Tilburg [email protected]

71. Labuschagne (ibid., 100) speaks of shift from ‘Legitimation durch Verfahren’ to ‘Legitimation durch Grundwerte’. 72. Ibid., 101. 73. See also: Torfs, “Zivilreligion in Belgien und den Niederlanden,” 163-165. Torfs speaks of “Verbundenheid durch die Meinungsverschiedenheit.”