Requiems for November: Week Five
Requiem by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Requiem by Andrew Lloyd Webber
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER REQUIEM
It is hard to believe that Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Requiem premiered as long ago as 1985. The premiere took place in New York on 24 February 1985 at St Thomas Church. The conductor was Lorin Maazel, and the three soloists were Placido Domingo (tenor), Sarah Brightman, Lloyd Webber's wife at the time, (soprano), and Paul Miles-Kingston, (boy soprano).
It was a work that caught the attention of the world, particularly giving us the beautiful Pie Jesu – perhaps the only movement from the work that is frequently heard at funerals throughout the world. The Pie Jesu has earned its place in the wider music world outside the original Requiem. Requiem won the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.
Although a very successful composer for the musical theatre, it was a new venture for Lloyd Webber to create a piece of serious classical music. The music mixes his melodic and pop-oriented style with more complex, sophisticated, and at times even austere classical forms.
The Requiem Mass was dedicated to his father, the composer and organist William Lloyd Webber, who had died in 1982.
As with many composers before him, Lloyd Webber did not set the Gradual (Dies Irae) text of the Mass. He divides the Sanctus into two movements, including the Hosanna with the Benedictus. He does not set the Agnus Dei separately, but rather combines it with the text of Pie Jesu, the concluding text from the Dies Irae. He includes a text from the burial service, Libera Me Domine. Listen to a recording of the 1985 New York premiere here.
It is hard to believe that Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Requiem premiered as long ago as 1985. The premiere took place in New York on 24 February 1985 at St Thomas Church. The conductor was Lorin Maazel, and the three soloists were Placido Domingo (tenor), Sarah Brightman, Lloyd Webber's wife at the time, (soprano), and Paul Miles-Kingston, (boy soprano).
It was a work that caught the attention of the world, particularly giving us the beautiful Pie Jesu – perhaps the only movement from the work that is frequently heard at funerals throughout the world. The Pie Jesu has earned its place in the wider music world outside the original Requiem. Requiem won the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.
Although a very successful composer for the musical theatre, it was a new venture for Lloyd Webber to create a piece of serious classical music. The music mixes his melodic and pop-oriented style with more complex, sophisticated, and at times even austere classical forms.
The Requiem Mass was dedicated to his father, the composer and organist William Lloyd Webber, who had died in 1982.
As with many composers before him, Lloyd Webber did not set the Gradual (Dies Irae) text of the Mass. He divides the Sanctus into two movements, including the Hosanna with the Benedictus. He does not set the Agnus Dei separately, but rather combines it with the text of Pie Jesu, the concluding text from the Dies Irae. He includes a text from the burial service, Libera Me Domine. Listen to a recording of the 1985 New York premiere here.