Beautiful....I like it. Thanks, Publius.
If you ask a music professional about which piece was Giuseppe Verdi’s greatest work, the answer you get will not be an opera, the Four Sacred Pieces, nor the cute little string quartet he wrote in a hotel in Naples. It will be the Requiem.
For the Dies irae, Verdi obviously has learned his lesson from Berlioz. (This gets used a lot in TV commercials.) Catch the whispering in horror from the chorus. For the Tuba mirum, Verdi uses his brass section like Berlioz. The bass intones the Mors stupebit with a sense of trepidation. The Liber scriptus features a mezzo applying some balm to the situation. Unlike Berlioz, Verdi brings back the Dies irae to cap the Sequence. This is Loren Maazel conducting.
There is a segue into the Quid sum miser and the Rex tremendae. Here the approach is far different from Berlioz. It sounds more like the opera house.
The soloists are Josephine Veasey, Placido Domingo, Ruggiero Raimondi and Martina Arroyo with Leonard Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
Here, Verdi opts for simplicity and brevity, as opposed to Berlioz.
The soloists are Renee Fleming, Violetta Urmana, Renè Papè and Jorge Antonio Pita with Antonio Pappano conducting.
And we’re off to the races! The Sanctus is much livelier and less hushed than Berlioz. With the Agnus Dei, the tone returns to reverence.
The soloists are Leontyne Price and Fiorenza Cassotto with Herbert von Karajan conducting at La Scala.
For he commands all that is Heaven and in/on Earth. There are no obstacles that can stop him or you if you truly are committed to him.