The Dies Irae of Verdi’s Requiem is an exceptional example of the handling of large form, through immediate statement of the heart of the worship, followed by alternations of contemplation and brimstone, that is, lyricism contrasted, seamlessly, against the ferocity of the main material to create a fully integrated and balanced form that neither falters nor fatigues, but excites and calms. This January of 2024 I have been studying this work once again, both from the score and with several recorded versions.
I still recall fully, for I am unable to put it aside, a moment from many years ago, when I was overseas for ten days at the beginning of November, 1989, when I had been exploring a length of the Danube after I had had business with the United Nations in Vienna. I was there by invitation to be interviewed for a senior field position in Lebanon. I was offered the position, but largely because of the political instability, accompanied by kidnapping of expatriates in Beirut, I ultimately declined the appointment. Several days later I was driving away from Linz, where I had visited, principally because of the city’s historical connection with Mozart, and had stopped my car on a low hill that overlooked the Austrian countryside, and, when I stepped from the car, on its radio played the Requiem’s Ingemisco sung by Pavarotti. Mihi quoque spem dedisti. In that moment, life was perfection.
There is another moment that continues to endure. At half past ten on May 7th, 2002, I was driving my car through the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, to Simon Fraser University in Burnaby to be interviewed for the position of administrative coordinator at the University’s recently new Institute of Health Research and Education; but I was apprehensive, fighting with myself. Driving along Hastings at Main, the radio was playing Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini, and the heart-melting 18th variation, in D flat, came on; and looking at all the misery around me at that wretched corner of the city, thought that Rachmaninoff, the musician, had an understanding of such misery and that it should not be despised, for each person loses oneself in a different and special way; and tangentially the sounds of Wotan’s Farewell, from the final act of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, also revived, as they often do when I am at that place in my city.
I have been working on material suggested by this moment for many years now. The Dies Irae plainchant is cited by Rachmaninov in over a dozen of his works, and is introduced in the Rhapsody in its seventh variation. The concept occurred to me of a series of short stories, to be grouped, as the twenty-four variations in the Rhapsody, into three distinct sections, each containing a longer story, or novella. I completed the sketch of the structure and its likely content between 1994 and 1998. The episode on the road near Linz opens part two. Six of the short stories are complete. The novella, which presents the theme of the book, is given within part one and is titled “Wotan’s Farewell.” It is in 36 chapters, of which some 20,000 words are complete. The reference to the D flat variation occurs in chapter 32 of the book. The structural problem, as yet not fully resolved, is whether or not three novellas, or novels, if expanded and then linked to one another, rest suitably amongst what would twenty-four variations, that is, short stories, to be titled in the whole as The Rachmaninov Variations.
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A spectacular and hair-raising performance by Hungarian pianist György Cziffra of Liszt’s 1859 paraphrase with variations, Totentanz.
The dance of death (or, danse macabre) was brought to the forefront of European human consciousness during the 14th century by famines, war, and the Black Death. Its musical representation is in the plainchant dies irae, and its derivative, the death and the maiden motif, both of which appear in other visual and musical works of art, either directly or thematically, such as Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
Also among the most interesting of the musical treatments are:
- Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death and A Night on Bare Mountain
- Shostakovich’s Symphony 14, Piano Trio No. 2, and String Quartet No. 8
- Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 (Death and the Maiden)
- Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
- Britten’s War Requiem
