Rest is an English-language Requiem Mass for mixed choir and sixteen brass players. The text is translated into English by the composer from the original Latin and Greek. It comprises twelve movements, and a performance is approximately fifty-five minutes in length. The work serves as a continued exploration of composing for brass, begun in 2010. The work is constructed primarily from the tetrachordal triadic supersets--that is, tetrachords based on major and minor triads--connected through parsimonious voice-leading. Rest is my third mass in a series of works in various languages composed for various ensembles.

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Several interpretations in performances, recordings, and publications of Giuseppe Verdi's Messa da Requiem raise issues concerning the relationship between these readings and the composer's intention. Understanding Verdi's tempo and phrasing in the Requiem is of crucial importance in rediscovering his intention. Knowing that Verdi's metronome markings were not merely performance suggestions but that they actually reflected his final decision is equally important. Unlike his operas, fast tempos are not introduced suddenly in the Requiem; rather, where tempo changes occur gradually from one section to the next, thereby maintaining the music's overall character. Verdi's phrasing is very subtle, and unconventional, because one sign may have multiple meanings. Compounding this complication are the many editorial errors in the published editions. David Rosen, in his critical edition, corrected many of these errors, and made additional editorial suggestions, but there are still numerous places where determining correct phrasing, as well as tempo fluctuations, knowledge of Verdi's use of signs and symbols is difficult.

Diss.--Tübingen--Eberhard-Karls-Univ., 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 355-363. Index.

This study of Verdi's choral style in the Manzoni Requiem includes an investigation of the bibliography pertaining to the subject, and a detailed study of the score to determine and verify the characteristics of each stylistic component, tabulating statistical material and listing examples demonstrating the various characteristics.

Missa pro defunctis (1802-1808) by Antonín Reicha (1770-1836) is a unique work. Situated in time and in style between the monumental requiem settings of Mozart and Berlioz, it establishes the concert requiem as a sub-genre of requiem composition. Missa pro defunctis incorporates attributes from both liturgical and concertized genres and co-exists within both church and dramatic composition realms. As seen in his copious theory writings, Reicha’s ideas concerning melody, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and dramatic composition inform his compositional preferences. In this study I demonstrate how a modern performance of Antonín Reicha's Missa pro defunctis can be informed by consideration of his major theoretical writings, by an understanding of the nineteenth-century concert requiem sub-genre, and by other writings on nineteenth-century performance practice. In producing an historically informed performance of Missa pro defunctis, I analyzed the four major theoretical treatises by Reicha for content, and relevancy, to the Requiem. I next analyzed the Missa pro defunctis itself in light of these treatises. I discovered that the work sometimes aligns with Reicha’s theoretical writings and sometimes departs from their principles, in large part, because of the inherent contradiction resulting when a sacred text is set in a dramatic fashion. I further incorporated conclusions about the implications for performance revealed through the study of Reicha’s theoretical writings and my own experience in preparing the work for performance. It is my hope that this recently published nineteenth-century work will receive more frequent performance than has been the case since its composition. This study contains resources to provide conductors a means of producing a performance that is in consonance with Reicha’s philosophies as a theorist and composer.

My final project for the D.M.A. in composition consists of a Requiem Mass honoring the victims of the Iraqi war, a conflict that has stirred public debate since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is not meant as a political statement; rather, it is intended as a tribute in the broadest sense--not only for the combatants who lost their lives, but also for the innocent citizens caught in the cross-fire, all the families left in grief, and the returning soldiers whose lives were altered if not shattered by the experience of war. It speaks to the devastating toll war has on society in general. The Requiem lasts approximately 56 minutes. Except for the Sanctus, the seven movements of the work are all performed contiguously. It is scored for mixed chorus; SSAATBB, a solo, coloratura soprano, solo tenor and orchestra (3333 2431, 2 harps, percussion and strings). Mass for a Time of War reflects a broad array of stylistic impulses from the medieval through the present day, all the while transcending the boundaries of the various musical gestures and resources. These influences include: Schoenberg's signature hexachord pair (012569) (013478), the tone row from Webern's Op. 21 Symphony (1928), Charles Ives's The Unanswered Question (1906), Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles (1966), Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (1941), Franz Liszt's Via Crucis (LW J33) and the Kyrie from Haydn's Mass in C major, Paukenmesse (Hob. XXII: 9). Techniques of contrafactum, serialism, including a section of total serialization as well as an aleatoric passage, are of structural importance in the work. Several new compositional methods developed for the Credo include the use of a matrix multiplier on rhythmic and tone rows to produce a new row--albeit a tonal one--and a procedure the author calls "rhythmic resonances." In Mass for a Time of War, texts and chants from the Missa pro defunctis [Mass for the Dead] are interwoven with Czeslaw Milosz's poem Meaning, and serve as structural scaffolding throughout. The choices of additional texts and what the author terms "musical subtexts" that surround the scaffolding of the Latin are selected and positioned to heighten the unfolding narrative. The texts from the Mass for the Dead anchors the Requiem, while the emotional thrust is guided by Milosz's Meaning. Although the Latin texts are deeply religious, they have been taken from their familiar context by aligning them with prose and poetry. It was not intended to remove their religious connotations, but to instead expand their significance to a metaphoric stature. Additional texts include Emily Dickinson's stark poem on death, LXXVI, several lines from Rainer Maria Rilke's The Ninth Duino Elegy, texts from Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Dexter Filkin's The Forever War, texts in both the Ancient Greek and English translation of Homer's Iliad, Erich Maria Remarcque's All Quiet on the Western Front, several texts from The New York Times Magazine and New Yorker Magazine articles, as well as the names of victims on both sides of the war. The arrangement of the texts and subtexts are consciously meant to imitate "cut-up" poetry or fiction, also called découpage, a form that takes small sections of words from existing poems as well as additional texts, such as those from newspapers and magazines and rearranges them to create new poems or other texts. The dichotomy of tonal and atonal impulses, compositional constructs that informed other of my compositions, form some structural basis for the work. Choice of these and other musical procedures is not arbitrary. They are not reasons in themselves, or meant to form a new mode of expression or imitate a particular musical style. Rather they support a dramatic narrative with deep resonances and historical allusion, one that draws the listener into the emotional substance of the difficult, often brutal dilemmas of war that humankind has wrestled and struggled with since before the printed word. / Music Composition / Accompanied by one .doc Microsoft Word document: Mass For A Time of War (score).

An unusual opportunity to hear and perform this work has been afforded at North Texas State Teachers College by the presentation of the German Requiem in the summer of 1941. Furthermore, a Brahms Festival, including another presentation of the Requiem along with outstanding compositions of Brahms in other media, is to be given during commencement week of June, 1942. Not only does this type of emphasis promote interest among students and faculty, but it also serves as a stimulus to detailed study of the German Requiem, thus intensifying the immediate importance and personal significance of the subject.

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