Pizzetti Requiem

 Day 182

Pizzetti Requiem

Westminster Cathedral Choir

James O'Donnell

The only things I knew about Pizzetti is that he had a splendid first name - Ildebrando - and that he wrote an operatic setting of Murder in the Cathedral. So I came to this Requiem with a completely clear mind. I have to say that it was a real eye opener. Unlike any of the other Requiems I have listened to this week this one is for unaccompanied choir. Pizzetti uses a variety of combinations of voices from a single choir through to multiple parts divided into three choirs. The effect is breathtaking when the choir is divided up in this way and brings to mind some of the effects in Venetian Poly-Choral music of the 16th and 17th centuries. The harmonic style is basically tonal and the harmony is rich and constantly inventive. A lot of the choral writing has its basis in plainchant - this is particularly true of the Dies Irae, which uses the traditional chant as the building blocks to an impressively managed build up of tension over a five minute passage - very difficult for a composer to achieve such concentration.

I was expecting something more modernist that this (the work dates from 1922) but reading up on the composer makes it clear that he wanted to move away from the almost exclusively operatic work in Italy back to the world of previous generations of church-based composers. I think he succeeded brilliantly in this. This music is ever pastiche - it belongs of its time - but it has its roots in music of several centuries ago.