Virginia Knight <[log in to unmask]>:

>I don't really know what the difference between a Catholic and Protestant
>requiem might be, apart from the source of the text set.  Neither part of
>the Church has a monopoly on a dread of final judgement, or expectation of
>a blessed afterlife.

Sure.  But it seems that most of Catholic (or Catholic raised) composers
felt very attracted, since the later XVIII century at least, by the
depiction of the Final Judgement at the Requiem.  One could said that those
composers placed a lot of "emphasis" at the "Dies Irae" through the diverse
musical resources they had.  In the case of Berlioz, for example, I think
that the depiction of God's Wrath was for him the main attractive of the
text.  Faure's Requiem, instead, is a setting of the Catholic Requiem in
which there's little emphasis placed at the "Dies Irae".  That's not very
common.  Even Liszt's Requiem:  all its austerity (male choir and organ)
and it's return to modality falls down a little when the Last Trumpet calls
(a last romantic temptation, perhaps).

Pablo Massa
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