Requiem is a musical setting of the roman catholic mass for the dead, transformed by composers from mozart to verdi into one of music's grandest forms.
The Requiem Mass — named for the opening words 'Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine' (Grant them eternal rest, O Lord) — is the Catholic liturgy for the dead. Composers have set its texts since the Renaissance, but the form acquired its monumental concert-music identity in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Mozart's Requiem in D minor (1791), left incomplete at his death and finished by Süssmayr, surrounded the work in legend. Berlioz's 'Grande messe des morts' (1837) calls for sixteen timpani and four offstage brass bands. Verdi's Requiem (1874), written for the death of the novelist Manzoni, is operatic in scale and emotional fury. Brahms's 'Ein deutsches Requiem' (1868) sets German Lutheran texts of consolation rather than the Latin liturgy. Fauré (1890) and Duruflé (1947) wrote intimate, redemptive Requiems. The form remains the place composers go to confront death directly — without the cover of plot or character.