Requiem
A requiem may be either
a funeral service, particularly one conducted according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., a Requiem Mass or Missa pro Defunctis (Mass for the Dead)) - although the word Requiem is also sometimes used of the funeral services of certain other Christian denominations;
or
a musical work: a setting of the text of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass, notable examples being those by Mozart (1791), Berlioz (1837), Verdi (1873), and Fauré (1887). In the twentieth century, however, there have been many ‘secular’ and ‘semi-secular’ Requiems, i.e., works celebrating the dead but setting to music a text which is either entirely or partly non-religious. Delius’s Requiem (1916), e.g., has a text loosely based on passages in Shakespeare and the works of the German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer (1788- 1860) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900); while Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem (1962) includes nine poems by the war poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) interpolated into the Latin text of a Requiem Mass. There have also been purely instrumental Requiems, the best-known probably being Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem (1940).
or
a poem. Among the many with the title Requiem are poems by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) (which opens with the well-known couplet ‘When I am dead, my dearest,/Sing no sad songs for me’); by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) (which contains the familiar line ‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea’); by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900); and by Ogden Nash (1902-1971). There is also A German Requiem, by James Fenton (1949-).
Etymological note: The word requiem is the accusative singular form of the Latin noun requies, which means ‘rest’, ‘repose’. The religious service, a ‘Requiem’ or ‘Requiem Mass’, is so called because in the traditional Latin funeral Mass, i.e., Missa pro Defunctis, requiem is the first word of the prayer which opens the service: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis (‘Grant them eternal rest, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them’).
See also Requiescat in pace.
