requiem for the fallen

program note

Requiem for the Fallen grew out of conversations this annotator had with Melinda O’Neal concerning how the Handel Choir of Baltimore could provide the Choir with a new work and the desire to encourage Leshnoff to write an extended work for chorus and orchestra. Over the past few years at least three possible subjects were proposed but rejected. At the composer’s request, several texts were suggested by Elizabeth and Carl Schmidt, and when some poignant verses from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and a thirteenth-century Prayer of St. Francis were offered the composer’s imagination was fired. The title itself, indeed the very concept of the Requiem, began to emerge in the composer’s mind, and during a meeting last year involving Leshnoff, Maestros O’Neal and Thakar, and Carl Schmidt and Bill Nerenberg was there, too – and he actually coined the “for the fallen” part the title was decided. Whitman’s war poetry, however, was written as a reaction to the Civil War, and in Leshnoff’s words, “I sought to find other texts with a universal message.”

Requiem for the Fallen, written as a single continuous movement, is comprised of five parts: (A) Traditional Latin Requiem opening; (B) Whitman; (C) Hebrew Kaddish; (D) Whitman; (E) Prayer of St. Francis. Following the opening, in which a theme used throughout is presented, the first graphic Whitman poem, which asks the earth to absorb the blood of soldiers and exhale it so that its shedding is not in vain, is sung. A traditional Jewish prayer that does not reference death but is traditionally spoken by mourners who have lost close family members follows Whitman’s anguished words surging to a climax before subsiding. The second Whitman poem suggests a march and is full of musical imagery including “full-key’d bugles” and “great pounding drums.” The section climaxes at the sight of the “double grave” awaiting the two veterans (son and father) which leads to the elegiac closing section, a contemplative setting of the Prayer of St. Francis, a text that focuses attention on the individual’s own contribution to universal issues such as hatred and love, doubt and faith, sadness and joy. During some of this section the orchestra is virtually silent allowing the choral forces to “contemplate” the words before the orchestra quietly re-enters. Requiem for the Fallen ends serenely leaving the listener to contemplate the power of words and music.