The meaning of the Requiem text, part 6:

Isn’t it interesting that the first creative act of God recorded in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, concerns light? “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Gen. 1:3 KJV). When we get to the last book of the Christian New Testament we see the same idea: “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Rev. 21:23 KJV). This bookending use of light imagery also plays out in the Requiem. Its very first line is: “Grant them eternal rest, Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them.” The title of the last section? That very same perpetual light, “Lux aerterna.” Just in case we didn’t get the drift, both “eternal” and “perpetual” are used.

Last week I discussed Mary Magdalene, and she ended up taking over the entire post. You go, Mary! But time is hastening on, with our concert now less than three weeks away, so I must also hasten on. I’ll start out with a discussion of the “thief” who’s mentioned in the same stanza as Mary Magdalene, again, one character mentioned one time in the Requiem. An explanation of who this person is, though, gives us a window into many of the ideas presented in the text of this work. The relevant lines are:

You, who absolved Mary,
and listened to the thief,
give me hope also.

Last week I wrote about animals in the Requiem. This week I’m concentrating on one person mentioned one time in the Requiem text. I guess I’m constitutionally unable to just go through the text line by line. You wouldn’t enjoy that anyway, would you? I’ve already talked about Abraham, David and the Sybils, so they’re covered. But that still leaves several other individuals or groups who should get an explanation, and that endeavor will take up this post and at least one more after that. In the “Recordare,” we have the lines:

Qui Mariam absolvisti
et latronem exaudisti
mihi quoque spem dedisti.

There are four different animals (by my count) mentioned in the Requiem. What’s their significance?

I’ll just go in order. The first two animals are sheep and goats, mentioned in the “Recordare” section sung by the quartet. “Recordare” means “Remember,” with the line as a whole reading “Remember, kind Jesus.” So here is the relevant section:

Before I even get to David, Abraham, and the Sybils, I should probably mention the references in the very first section of the Requiem to Zion and Jerusalem: “You are praised, God, in Zion, and homage will be paid you in Jerusalem.” This line echoes the ideas in the New Testament book of Hebrews, “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly” (Hebrews 12:22 NIV). You can see that the words “Zion” and “Jerusalem” in these verses refer to literal places but have a deeper, spiritual meaning. The same can be said of the Requiem text.

What does the title itself mean? “Rest.” The funeral mass as a whole is named for its first word, from the Latin “requies.” 

What a fantastically complicated story lies behind these two simple questions! All sorts of theories have been suggested: that Mozart thought the commission had come from the Underworld and that he was writing his own funeral music, that Antonio Salieri, Mozart’s musical rival, was behind the commission (and also behind Mozart’s death), and so on. We do have an actual anecdote, mentioned in several reputable Mozart biographies, that Mozart told his wife, Constanze, that he was thinking of death and didn’t believe he had much longer to live, that he felt that he was writing the requiem for himself, and that he was sure he had been poisoned. So Constanze took the score away from him for awhile until his spirits lifted. We have no concrete evidence that a) Mozart actually said this or b) he was actually being poisoned. Indeed, while there have been over 100 theories proposed as to the cause of his death, the most credible idea is that he died of a recurrence of rheumatic fever, a disease he had first contracted as a child.