# English Requiems



## Bevo (Feb 22, 2015)

Hey. So I'm loving that rather dark/depressive mood of Requiems, but I was curious if anyone knows of any in English. I search on Google and all the results are about English translations of the text (which I've already looked at). So does anyone know of any? Thanks in advance.


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Bevo said:


> Hey. So I'm loving that rather dark/depressive mood of Requiems, but I was curious if anyone knows of any in English. I search on Google and all the results are about English translations of the text (which I've already looked at). So does anyone know of any? Thanks in advance.


Do you mean English singing ?



> Exultate's full-orchestral recording of The German Requiem by Johannes Brahms is one of only two known recordings sung in English available on CD today.


About Brahms requiem.


----------



## Bevo (Feb 22, 2015)

I'm referring to ones actually written FOR the English language. Not one translated to English that was intended to be sung in another language. (Sorry, I should have clarified more.)


----------



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

The Requiem is a setting of a Catholic mass for the dead. The English speaking countries of the time - Scotland and England (including Ireland and Wales) - abandoned Catholicism in the mid 16th Century. The Scots, like other Calvinist groups also abandoned church music. The English went for a plainer style of service. There was not a mass, the priest met the body at the churchyard gate and accompanied it to the graveside with a simple service including several funeral sentences. The Book of Common Prayer suggests that they may be sung. Accordingly, what we have in English is not a Requiem but rather settings of the funeral sentences by among others Morley, Tomkins, Purcell, Croft and Boyce.

Croft used Purcell's setting of _Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts_ for the very good reason that:



> there is one verse composed by my predecessor, the famous Mr Henry Purcell, to which, in justice to his memory, his name is applied. The reason why I did not compose that verse anew (so as to render the whole service entirely of my own composition) is obvious to every Artist; in the rest of that service composed by me, I have endeavoured as near as I could, to imitate that great master and celebrated composer, whose name will for ever stand high in the rank of those who have laboured to improve the English style


Croft's Funeral Sentences were sung at George Frederic Handel's funeral in 1759, and have been included in every British state funeral since their publication. Recent uses have been at the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2002 and Baroness Thatcher in 2012.

So the English don't do Requiems but still have some superb church funeral music.


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Bevo said:


> I'm referring to ones actually written FOR the English language. Not one translated to English that was intended to be sung in another language. (Sorry, I should have clarified more.)


I do understand, I am not sure but in my humble opinion the composers using the actual Latin/ religious languages.
If I find something I do let you know.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Britten - War requiem (mix of latin texts and English poems)
Rutter - Requiem (mix of latin texts and English psalms)

Hindemith - When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed (_Requiem for the ones we loved_, Whitman poems)


----------



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Bevo said:


> Hey. So I'm loving that rather dark/depressive mood of Requiems, but I was curious if anyone knows of any in English. I search on Google and all the results are about English translations of the text (which I've already looked at). So does anyone know of any? Thanks in advance.


Howells (1932), Britten (1961) and Rutter (1985) all wrote Requiem pieces that included some additional English text, but they left the Latin as it was.

(Edit: Ah, ArtRock got there before me on a couple of 'em!)


----------

