REQUIEM – Karl Jenkins

Description

Tracks included:

• 1. Introit
• 2. Dies Irae
• 3. The Snow of Yesterday
• 4. Rex Tremendae
• 5. Confutatis
• 6. From Deep in My Heart
• 7. Lacrimosa
• 8. Now As a Spirit
• 9. Pie Jesu
• 10. Having Seen the Moon
• 11. Lux Aeterna
• 12. Farewell
• 13. In Paradisum

Program Notes:

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. The traditional mass for the souls of the dead takes its name from this opening prayer for God to grant the departed eternal rest, and for perpetual light to shine upon them. In this rite of the Christian faith, believers hear of the terrors of judgment day and the sufferings of the damned, and pray that believers will escape the flames and enjoy eternal life in heaven.

The Japanese understanding of death has no corresponding concept of judgment, punishment, and reward. Instead, death is a natural process in which a soul returns inevitably to nature, just as snow must melt and cherry blossoms must fall. The spirits of the departed roam the world for months or even years before they are finally ready to merge with the cosmos. Just prior to death, many Japanese follow an ancient tradition of composing a jisei, which is a farewell poem to life, in the form of a haiku.

Karl Jenkins beautifully combines these two cultural understandings of death in his Requiem, enriching the Latin text codified by the church in the 16th century with Japanese death haiku from the 17th and 18th centuries. His musical settings reflect the origins of the texts: Latin prayers sung with Western orchestration and choral harmonies, Japanese haiku sung with Japanese flute and melodic styles. Jenkins vividly paints the texts within these styles, as the relentless rhythms of the Dies Irae give way to the melting solo flute of The Snow of Yesterday.

Jenkins also found points of commonality between the two philosophies, with haiku that echo the Benedictus and the Agnus Dei of the Requiem Mass. He combined the texts in these movements, with the women singing the Japanese poems above the men intoning the Latin prayers in monastic style. He concludes his Requiem with an ethereal setting of In Paradisum, in which a joyful and playful harp welcomes the souls of the departed into paradise.  – Yvonne Grover

Karl Jenkins (1944 – )

Karl Jenkins knew from an early age that he wanted to make his life in music. As the son of the chapel choir master and organist in the village of Penclawdd, Wales, Jenkins learned  piano and  music theory from his father and was strongly influenced by the singing tradition of the Welsh church. At school he excelled at oboe, performing with the National Youth Symphony of Wales. Continuing  his musical studies at Cardiff University and the Royal Academy of Music, he found himself drawn to jazz, preferring it to the atonal, dissonant style of music being taught in his composition classes. Describing himself as “one of the few jazz oboists in captivity,” he spent the following decades touring as a jazz performer, composer, and band leader.

Jenkins’ musical career entered a new chapter when he settled in London and began composing music for movies and advertising. His distinctive fusion of European and world music attracted an enthusiastic audience, most notably with his Adiemus recordings used in Delta Air Lines commercials  in the 1990s. Composing next for the concert hall, he turned to the great liturgical works of the Christian church, revisiting the historic texts to interpret them anew using influences and ideas from other cultures. Over the course of his career to date Jenkins’ music has earned him 17 gold and platinum recordings and a host of accolades, including being named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2015, Jenkins was awarded a Knighthood for “services to composing and crossing musical genres.”

In a documentary on his career, Jenkins commented “I feel quite strongly that composing should communicate with people…I don’t think there’s any point in writing music if one doesn’t have an audience.” Of that the eminent composer should have no fear: his life in music has made him the most performed living composer in the world today.