And the answer is: an arch. We all know about Roman arches, don’t we? The architectural point, which ties in with the musical point, is that there are matching stones on each side of the arch, each one bending closer and closer to the center, with the top stone, the one that holds it all in place, called the “key stone.” Without that center stone that whole thing collapses.
So I had read in several places that the Rutter Requiem had this arch form with the “Sanctus” serving as the keystone. But after all, that idea may just be something cooked up by music critics, right? People who make their livings by parsing out arcane meanings in other people’s work. (There’s a funny short story, I think by Kurt Vonnegut, in which Shakespeare travels to the future and visits a literature class that is studying his plays. At the end he staggers out, saying something like, “What a wealth of words is there for such a simple play!” Anybody know what story I’m talking about? Please advise.)
But then I ran across an excellent set of short videos by the Great Man himself, and he also said that he’d used this arch idea. So, if he’s on board with it, I guess it must be true. I’m not going to try for a word-for-word transcript here, as I’d encourage you to watch the video below (it’s less than 10 minutes long) but will summarize what he says. (I ended up posting two of the videos.) He does say how he chose the texts, explaining that he didn’t feel bound to stick to the standard ones in Roman Catholic liturgy but included texts from the burial service of the 1662 Church of England Book of Common Prayer as well. “One always tries to be the humble servant of the text.”
He wanted to begin and end with authorized texts from a standard Requiem Mass, though, and so used:
“Requiem aeterna”–a request to God to “grant them [that is, those who have died] eternal rest” and
“Lux aeterna”–another request to God, this time to have “light eternal shine upon them.”
In the last section, though, before the Latin text, Rutter has included a brief reference to the Book of Common Prayer’s burial service, an almost exact quotation from the King James Version of the Bible, Revelation 14:13:
And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.
Personally, I find the soprano line for this part to send chills up my spine!
Sections two and six are psalms that illuminate themes of a requiem, in English rather than Latin. Rutter says that he wanted to include some English, as he thinks that the two languages, English and Latin, “rub up against each other.” Section two is from the very “dark” Psalm 130, with some striking wording from the Book of Common Prayer’s version:
If thou, LORD, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it?
Section six is from the most familiar and beloved Psalm 23 that portrays God as a Shepherd of His people, much more joyful and reassuring with its promise that “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
Sections three and five are prayers to Jesus, asking for mercy and forgiveness of sin. Number three is taken directly from the Requiem Mass, a plea to God the Son to grant rest to those who have died. Number five is a little more complicated, as it combines lines in Latin from the Mass with lines in English from the burial service. Rutter has, intentionally I’m sure, set up a contrast not only in language but also in ideas, so that the Lamb of God’s taking away the sin of the world is juxtaposed against the imagery of man’s miserable and short life, including the famous line “in the midst of life we are in death.” But he doesn’t leave us there, as he ends the section with the promise from Jesus taken from the BCP but an exact quotation from the Gospel of John 11:25-26:
I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
These are the words of Jesus spoken to Martha the sister of Lazarus before raising the dead man back to life.
Then the centerpiece, the keystone, is the “Sanctus,” a very joyful section that proclaims the holiness and glory of God. (One title given to God here is “Sabaoth,” kind of a weird word that has nothing to do with the Sabbath but instead “may designate Jehovah as either (1) God of the armies of earth, or (2) God of the armies of the stars, or (3) God of the unseen armies of angels; or perhaps it may include all these ideas.” [from the dictionary section of BibleStudyTools.com.] Isn’t that interesting?)
Well, I think I’d better stop for now, as this post has gotten pretty wonky. If you’d like to find out more, especially about the life of a commissioned composer and how the theme for the first section came to Rutter, I can’t encourage you enough to watch both videos below:
Note to readers of this post: I ended up writing a whole book about Rutter’s Requiem, including material from this and the previous post but expanding upon it and adding textual analysis for each section. You can purchase the book here on this website or through Amazon.
