Richard Danielpour

* American Requiem

Stephanie Blythe (mezzo), Hugh Smith (tenor), Mark Oswald (baritone),
Pacific Symphony Orchestra/Carl St. Clair.
Reference Recordings RR-97CD {DDD}  TT: 62:58

I've gone hot and tepid over the works by Danielpour I've heard before.
No need to hash them over again here.  American Requiem strikes me as both
compelling and problematic.  Danielpour had written the work and received
his galleys from Schirmer's on, amazingly enough, September 11, 2001.
Immediately, he decided to change the dedication.  In a perverse way,
he was probably fortunate.  I suspect he would have found writing a work
specifically on that event rather difficult -- the horror of it too big
to take in quickly.

American Requiem in its large plan owes much to Britten's War Requiem,
as well as to Bliss's Morning Heroes and to Vaughan Williams's Dona nobis
pacem:  words from the Latin liturgy mixed with a poetic anthology relating
to death and war.  In addition, one hears bits and pieces of just about
every major requiem in the choir-and-orchestra repertoire:  Mozart, Verdi,
Durufle, Britten (again), and perhaps even the Stravinsky Requiem
Canticles.  Danielpour must have done this deliberately:  the parallels
are that close.

All that aside, I should say first what I like.  Chiefly, I like the
fact that Danielpour created an ambitious, big-hearted, extremely
expressive work.  No irony, no self-protective modesty here.  Responding
to his subject, he takes a huge chance of reaping both pretension and
emotional inadequacy.  He lays himself open to a critical mauling and
often not only gets away with the risk, but in certain places triumphs.
I suppose one might call his music neo-Romantic, but it's not the
bloodless, easy-listening sort.  To me, Danielpour's idiom carries on
classic Modernism.  It's actually musically eloquent and tough-minded.

I've read other reviews which thought much less of the piece than I do,
and I appreciate their point.  Danielpour certainly hovers around the line
of -- not plagiarism, really -- but undigested appropriation.  He raids
Britten's War Requiem for many of his most striking moments.  Thus, the
"Sanctus" begins with the hammering of bells and a strongly declamatory
presentation of the soloist, as in Britten's "Sanctus." This is probably
the most glaring borrow in the work, but one comes across lots of others.
Yet none of these passages constitutes a straight steal.  It's an
appropriation instead at one level of abstraction.  For example, the
"Lacrimosa" uses Mozart's rocking triple rhythm, but not the melody or
harmony or even the phrasing.  The mood and some of the musical iconography
of the "Libera me" recall Britten (again), but the actual material differs.
For some reason, the Mozart-Verdi-Stravinsky-Durufle cribs bother me less
than the Brittens do.  It may be a matter of conspicuously different idioms
or the passage (in three of the cases) of so much time that the models
become archetypally distant.

On the other hand, Danielpour provides a lot that's all his.
I particularly admire the section "Lay This Body Down," with its
sublimation of the blues, and the H.  D.  settings.  On the other hand,
Danielpour's handling of the orchestra and the chorus seem more masterful
than the songs for his soloists.  There's not one really great, memorable
tune in the work, but there's no melodic aimlessness either.  Furthermore,
the handling of motives (particularly in the "Sanctus," "Benedictus," and
"Libera me") is impressive, both in the punch it manages to deliver and
From the more technical stance of hiding the machinery.  As time passes
and the Modernist idiom becomes as classic as, say, Beethoven's, American
Requiem may well show up as one of the masterpieces of its time.  As
Vaughan Williams once remarked, it's not the job of the composer to say the
thing that's never been said, but to say the right thing at the right time.

The performances are excellent.  I can find no fault in the playing,
the conducting, the chorus, the vocal technique of the soloists, or the
communication of the texts.  And it pumps out the volts.  The sound is
quite good, achieving a comprehensible balance among complex forces.

Steve Schwartz