UC Santa Cruz

ABSTRACT

Joshua Philip Spitsbergen

The Requiem: The Dies Irae as a Motif and Compositional Resource in Farewell For Now (2017), For Chorus and Chamber Orchestra

Requiems are enthralling types of choral works, for they engage an emotional subject which puzzles and perplexes: death. Robert Chase posits at least 2,500 requiems have been recorded over the centuries, and current and contemporary settings of the Requiem Mass exist today. Farewell For Now (2017), exhibits three essential components of the Requiem Mass, evinced in three movements. The first two movements set pivotal portions of the traditional text, and the final movement includes my own narrative as commentary to the presented collection. The work is a representation of one of my deepest convictions as a composer: writing music which has meaning communicated through sounded text. The piece was motivated by tragedy, and textually emphasizes the inevitability of death, while underscoring the importance of hope.

In the accompanying essay, I briefly discuss the historical background of the Requiem Mass and the Dies irae, present salient structural features of Farewell For Now, connect selected themes present in the piece to excerpts from a few exemplary requiems, and examine an influential harmonic technique of Lutoslawski and its correlation to the dissertation composition.