Requiem

Whatever our emotions, it's a safe bet that some composer has been there before.

The Requiem for the dead is one of the most traditional of genres. Virtually every great composer has written one, sometimes in the traditional format, and sometimes not.

As a morbid 20-something, I had set up a page with a (partial) list of Requiems and these were the defiant lines that opened it:

It should be plainly clear that the dead have no need of a Requiem. They exist to assuage the pain of the living.

Arrogant phrasing and obviousness aside, it needs no edits.

The ones below are what I return to time and again.

I've left out traditional pieces composed for funerals. Mozart's Maurerisches Trauermusik (a piece that never fails to make me cry and yet I'm smiling by the end!) and Wagner's Siegfried's Funeral March (very self-consciously modeled on Mozart.)

First, the composer who pretty much sets the standard amidst Enlightenment aesthetics. It's somewhat controversial because it was left incomplete. Most scholars agree that it was completed by his student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr.

Mozart's Requiem in D Minor
Then, one by the most fervent anti-clerics of all time who nevertheless went on to compose a Requiem in the traditional form.

Verdi's Messa da Requiem
One by the iconoclast about whom no matter what is said is one of the composers most steeped in "tradition". This is a Requiem in all but name.

Boulez's Rituel - In Memoriam Bruno Maderna
Finally, one of the absolute pinnacles of Western Art. A composition that's so sui generis, there's never been any like it before or after.

Berlioz's Grand messe des morts, op. 5
Dona nobis pacem.