BERLIOZ REQUIEM

Grande Messe des Morts

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is one of the few great French Romantic composers. His sudden appearance, like some volcano rising out of the sea, shook the debilitated world of French music. His life was one of a man born before his time: his temperament and gifts would have made him an ideal contemporary of the great nineteenth century French musical renaissance which was to begin with Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. Yet during his lifetime the music of Berlioz was denigrated in France (when it was not ignored). The exception was his Requiem – the Grande Messe des Morts. The first performance was musical experience no-one had dreamed of before his time.

Berlioz may legitimately be seen as the pioneer of a new art of the orchestra. His admiration for Beethoven was unbounded, and he made lasting friendships with Liszt; Wagner, with whom he shared conducting duties in London; and Mendelssohn. But Berlioz was also much influenced by the contemporary impassioned and extravagant visions which had been fostered by the idealism of the French Revolution. His frequent demands for large numbers of instruments and voices came from his interest in the mastery of contrast. The matching of space and sonority was one of his lasting obsessions. He consciously strove to emphasise the remarkable sense of vastness which much of his music conveys. These aspects of his composing personality are highlighted in the Messe des Morts.

He had long planned a work of this kind, and a number of half-formed ideas were already on paper when the opportunity came in 1837. "The text of the Requiem was a quarry that I had long coveted," he wrote in his memoirs; "now at last it was mine and I fell upon it with a kind of fury. My brain felt as though it would explode with the pressure of ideas." Such was the flow of inspiration, he felt obliged to invent a musical shorthand to keep up with it.

This intense creative fervour contrasted ironically with the bureaucratic intrigues that bedevilled the path from the Minister of the Interior’s original commission to the first performance. The Messe was intended for a service to commemorate the dead of the 1830 revolution, but no sooner was the score completed than the Director of Fine Arts decided that the service would take place without music. Berlioz argued with the authorities, but they did not want a performance and no money was forthcoming. Eventually the Ministry of the Interior found a way to rid themselves of the Messe and the problem of payment. In Algeria, the French had just captured a besieged hill-top. A solemn service for a general and those of his soldiers who had died in North Africa was to be held in Paris. Berlioz would be asked to provide the music, and the commission passed to the patronage of the Ministry of War. However, Berlioz was to face many more obstacles before he was paid, including an attempt to buy him off with the cross of the Légion d’honneur – which he accepted but persisted in his efforts to extract payment. In his memoirs, Berlioz gave a vivid account of the tactics he found necessary for survival in musical Paris. "There are", he reminded his lesser-known contemporaries, "other, more violent, methods", which he advised them not to overlook.

The first performance of Grande Messe took place on 5^th December 1837 in the soldiers’ church, Les Invalides. The work was still dogged by controversy. A senior Parisian musician, with whom Berlioz was on bad terms, had been appointed conductor. Berlioz, to whom irritating the French musical establishment was second nature, had no qualms about upstaging him. At the point where Dies Irae gives way to Tuba Mirum, the music broadens to a tempo twice as slow, and the four brass ensembles break in. As he approached this bar, the conductor laid down his baton and began taking a pinch of snuff. Berlioz, who had been anticipating trouble, pushed him out of the way, marked out the four beats of the new bar, and conducted the Messe to its end. The performance was a success. As a liturgical event it moved devout Catholics to tears; as an occasion, its rapturous reception by most critics finally set the seal on Berlioz’s fame in Paris.

It is still a powerful and emotive work. The Kyrie, which sets the mournful nobility of the opening, is unforgettable. Even today, audiences are moved by the Sanctus (where the solo tenor is used) or by the wonderful ethereal six-fold Amen; perhaps also by the thrilling upward sweep of violins occurring at the word luceat (may it shine) just before the Kyrie and again near the end of the Agnus Dei.

Nonetheless, the Requiem is not the music of an orthodox believer, but of a visionary inspired by the dramatic implications of death and judgment. Berlioz did not see all heaven before his eyes as Handel was said to have done while composing Messiah, but thoughts of religious ritual always intoxicated his imagination. The Grande Messe is the work of a genius at the zenith of his powers.

A very large orchestra is required, with four additional brass ensembles placed at the four corners of the choral forces. The full strength of these resources is reserved for only a few passages. The hair-raising impact of multi-directional brass in the Dies Irae is the more noticeable against the work’s overall restraint. In the terrific Tuba Mirum, huge volumes of sound are produced by the brass orchestras; these magnificent forces are again employed, more sparingly however, in the Rex Tremendae and the Lacrymosa.

In the Hostias, Berlioz provides a stunning contrast, placing trombone pedal notes three octaves below a harmony of flutes in three parts, creating a most mysterious and majestic effect. Another innovation is the designation of eight pairs of timpani, not for sheer loudness, but by tuning to different pitches, for the playing of timpani chords in three, four or five parts, and to achieve an effect of close rolls. Berlioz had strong opinions about the bass drum – mainly against its use – but in the Grande Messe he uses it forte at moments of terror, always with economy, never with excess.

Listening to the subtleties as well as the overall grandeur of the Requiem, we can understand why the composer looked upon it as the work by which he wished to be judged by posterity. During his last year (1869), after his creative career had ended, he wrote: "If I were threatened with the destruction of the whole of my work save one, I should crave mercy for the Messe des Morts."

Last updated: 14 Oct 2002