Richard Danielpour.  An American Requiem (2001).  Pacific Symphony
Orchestra, soloists and Chorale conducted by Carl St. Clair.  Reference
Recordings RR-97CD.

Requiems!  May they lie in peace - but they cannot.  Any composer today
should be daunted by the task of writing a new one.

What Richard Danielpour has going for him are heart and excellence of
orchestration.  The challenges he faces are the limitations of his own
ultraconservative style and the long shadows cast by previous composers.
The composition under review has a few effective moments, and plenty of
sincerity, but represents a failure in advancing the future of music in
terms of casting any shadows of its own.

And the events of 11 September will be generating a host of competitive
requiems.  Danielpour had just opened an engraving of the work for final
editing when the World Trade Center was struck, so his got to be one of the
first to be dedicated to the victims.  Danielpour had been intending the
work as 'both a tribute to the American soldier and examination of war.'
As he relates in the notes,

   "My initial interesting writing the piece - began in 1998 when I
   started to establish dialogues with American veterans of World War
   II, the Korean War and the war in Vietnam.  It became immediately
   apparent to me that, in my life, I had completely bypassed anything
   having to do directly with the experiences that had shaped, and in
   some ways, defined the lives of these servicemen. - I sought to
   juxtapose the personal, private issues that arose out of these
   campaigns with the more public, global and philosophical ones."

Ambitious goals - especially considering the insurmountable masterpiece
of Benjamin Britten's essay in the form.  And to call it an 'American'
requiem invites comparisons with the tactics of Brahms' 'German' Requiem.
Nevertheless, Danielpour persevered, imitating Britten more than Brahms,
interspersing Latin text with American poetry.  A semi-American requiem,
then.  But which poetry to use? Time to employ a consultant, Kim Vaeth,
Poetic Text Editor, who searched through 500-plus texts for the right ones.
As she puts it, 'each word of the nine poems [chosen] has risen from a
great depth and carries the phosphor trail of other works.'

Not to mention musical phosphor trails.  The choice of Walt Whitman's
'Dirge for Two Veterans' is a risky one, considering the immensely
effective music set to the same words by Ralph Vaughan Williams in
his Dona Nobis Pacem.  Vaughan Williams has the right pace for the
processional, plus the conventional funeral-march dotted rhythm that
practically screams from the line 'And every blow from the great convulsive
drums.' Danielpour ignores this and instead tries a faster-paced 4/4
approach with heavy accents on the first three beats.  Why take on
the Vaughan Williams and force every listener familiar with it to be
disappointed and long to put on a CD of the earlier work? Next time
use another consultant.

On the other hand, Danielpour does succeed with less familiar material.
His Agnus Dei includes a most moving setting of words by Michael Harper:
'We visit bar/an unmarked grave,/the money,/the grass, the ground/your
face,/no stone, your voice,/we kiss the air.' The Latin Sanctus and Lux
Aeterna show Danielpour at his orchestral and choral best.

All three soloists do an excellent job, especially tenor Hugh Smith, whose
voice is reminiscent of Peter Pears.  The orchestra and recording are fine
as well, except for a couple of moments when the voices seem too distant.

So, a mixed result.  Other composers working on THEIR American requiems
need not worry.  The definitive one has yet to be written.

Jeff Dunn <[log in to unmask]>