Requiem

I want to move in a slightly different direction, and perhaps we'll come back to that, um, which is to say more broadly that I guess so much of your work involves choirs, but in very different ways.

Um, and so you have this piece that you're writing for the Morningtons and creating that bridge between Toronto and Dublin, but you've also done a lot of work in relation to music and mortality, um, and you have your Requiem for All Souls.

And I wonder if you'd like to tell us a little bit about that piece, um, and the libretto for that and, and how that speaks to your, your broader aesthetic as a composer and conductor in, in your past.

Right.

Uh, Requiem for All Souls was commissioned by, um, All Souls Episcopal Church in San Diego, um, in memory of, um, a priest who died.

Um, so the, the movements of the Requiem are, the text is prescribed.

It's in Latin, so there's no collaboration with a living poet or research on a, a dead poet, but, uh, prescribed Latin text.

But, um, uh, there's something so familiar to me as a, as a, a conductor and a choral singer, uh, the Latin text to the Requiem is so well-known.

Subsequent events were to give the last sentence of this letter a sinister note of prophecy.

Like Mozart writing the Requiem Mass on his deathbed, Tchaikovsky seemed to be defying some unfriendly fate to stop him in the midst of his great symphony.

There was to be a program to this symphony, a mysterious, profoundly personal program.

But Tchaikovsky would never tell the world what it was.

And so, likewise, fathers of the church understood him to be the angel which guardeth paradise, likewise to whom the decalogue was given to the chosen people, and who often defended the army of the people of God.

Likewise, in a very ancient document, maybe first century, at the latest mid-second century of the Shepherd of Hermas, we see there a reference to St. Michael, according to the Christian faith, the ancient Christian faith, he receives our souls at the hour of death and presents them to God, which prayer is included then in our Requiem Mass, for example.

And so, if we meditate, both from the beginning to the end of our life and of the end of the world, we see the principal role of St. Michael, the archangel.

And we should not only have devotion to him, asking for his protection, but most of all, seek how to imitate him.

It was a grey marble finger.

the mass for the dead i was awake widely cruelly awake i had been awake all night what sleep could there be for me when the woman i loved was to be married next morning married and not to me i went to my room early the family party in the drawing-room maddened me grouped about the round table with the stamped plush cover each was busy with work or book or newspaper but not too busy to stab my heart through and through with their talk of the wedding her people were near neighbours of mine so why should her marriage not be canvassed in my home circle they did not mean to be cruel they did not know that i loved her but she knew it i told her but she knew it before that she knew it from the moment when i came back from three years of musical study in germany came back and met her in the wood where we used to go nutting when we were children i looked into her eyes and my whole soul trembled with thankfulness that i was living in a world that held her also i turned and walked by her side through the tangled green wood and we talked of the long-ago days and it was have you forgotten and do you remember till we reached her garden gate then i said good-bye no auf wiedersehen and in a very little time i hope and she answered good-bye by the way you haven't congratulated me yet congratulated you yes did i not tell you i am to marry mr benoliel next month and she turned away and went up the garden slowly i asked my people and they said it was true kate my dear playfellow was to marry this spaniard rich wilful accustomed to win polished in manners and base in life why was she to marry him no one knows said my father but her father is talked about in the city and pinoleil the spaniard is rich perhaps that's it that was it she told me so when after two weeks spent with her and near her i implored her to break so vile a chain and to come to me who loved her whom she loved you are quite right she said calmly we were sitting in the window-seat of the oak parlour in her father's desolate old house i do love you and i shall marry mr pinoleille

why

look around you and ask me why if you can i looked around on the shabby bare room with its faded hangings of sage-green marine its threadbare carpet its patched washed-out chintz chair-covers i looked out through the square latticed window at the ragged unkempt lawn at her own gown of poor material though she wore it as queens might desire to wear ermine and i understood kate is obstinate it is her one fault i knew how vain would be my entreaties yet i offered them how unavailing my arguments yet they were set forth how useless my love and my sorrow yet i showed them to her no she answered but she flung her arms round my neck as she spoke and held me as one may hold one's best treasure "'No, no, you are poor and he is rich.

After fifteen minutes of carols, every fibre of me seemed vibrating in an agony of physical misery.

To banish the echo of the mistletoe bow, I hummed softly to myself a melody of Palestrina's, and felt more awake than ever.

then the thing happened which nothing will ever explain as i lay there i heard breaking through and gradually overpowering the air i was suggesting a harmony which i had never heard before beautiful beyond description and as distinct and definite as any song man's ears have ever listened to my first half-formed thought was more weights but the music was choral music true and sweet with it mingled an organ's notes and with every note the music grew in volume it is absurd to suggest that i dreamed it for still hearing the music i leapt out of bed and opened the window the music grew fainter there was no one to be seen in the snowy garden below shivering i shut the window the music grew more distinct and i became aware that i was listening to a mass a funeral mass and one which i had never heard before i lay in my bed and followed the whole course of the office the music ceased i was sitting up in bed my candle alight and myself as wide awake as ever and more than ever possessed by the thought of her but with a difference before i had only mourned the loss of her now my thoughts of her were mingled with an indescribable dread the sense of death and decay that had come to me with that strange beautiful music coloured all my thoughts i was filled with fancies of hushed houses black garments rooms where white flowers and white linen lay in a deathly stillness i heard echoes of tears and of dim-voiced bells tolling monotonously i shivered as it were on the brink of irreparable woe and in its contemplation i watched the dull dawn slowly overcome the pale flame of my candle now burnt down into its socket i felt that i must see kate once again before she gave herself away before ten o'clock i was in the oak parlour she came to me as she entered the room her pallor her swollen eyelids and the misery in her eyes wrung my heart as even that night of agony had not done i literally could not speak i held out my hands would she reproach me for coming to her again for forcing upon her a second time the anguish of parting she did not she laid her hands in mine and said i'm thankful you have come do you know i think i am going mad don't let me go mad jasper the look in her eyes underlined her words i stammered something and kissed her hands i was with her again and joy fought again with grief understand she went on it was not a dream i was wide awake thinking of you the weights had not long gone and i-i was looking at your likeness i was not asleep i shivered as i held her fast as heaven sees us i did not dream it i heard a mass sung and jasper it was a mass for the dead i followed the office you are not a catholic but i thought i feared oh i don't know what i thought i am thankful there is nothing wrong with you i felt a sudden certainty and complete sense of power possess me now in this her moment of weakness while she was so completely under the influence of a strong emotion i could and would save her from benoliel and myself from life-long pain "'Kate,' I said, "'I believe it is a warning.

You shall not marry this man.

Brian Anthony Marnie, spelt M-A-H-O-N-Y, 12 October 1934 to 17 September 2026, former Marist and 38 years of marriage, beloved father to Shan, Joshua and Nicholas.

Requiem Mass to celebrate the life of Brian will be held at St John the Apostle Kippach's, Tomorrow, Friday the 25th of September at 11am.

And for live stream details, please visit the Tender Funerals website.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.

Like I said, the Spencer family wanted to reclaim Diana in his retelling and hold a quiet private burial service, but Buckingham Palace quickly pushed events towards a major public and royal occasion.

He also writes that Diana's siblings requested Mozart's Requiem be played at her funeral in accordance with what they believed were her wishes, and Spencer writes that officials rejected it by falsely claiming that Requiem music could not be played at a Church of England funeral.

Interesting.

I would actually believe that if I was told that, so I wonder how he knows it's false.

26 but yeah cool uh what about what else you got on there

So the other game I just played, another Capcom game, because I've been playing Resident Evil games all year, because Requiem came out earlier this year, and I played

it.

And I played it after playing through 4 Remake, which I hadn't played before.

Then I went back and played through Resident Evil 7, which is one of my favorites.

And then I went back and did Resident Evil Village again, so like replays.

And then I was all ready for Requiem.

And then, like you say, I just really like Resident Evil.