“Powerful imagery portrayed musically ...
I was enthralled. It is a work that is do-able and creates so many concert possibilities. Kudos to Donald Patriquin and Wolfgang Kater for this fascinating and well-researched contribution to choral music.”
- Erica Phare
NEW MUSIC FOR CHOIR, SOPRANO AND CELLO SOLOISTS, STRING
QUARTET, PIANO & CONTRA BASS OR KEYBOARD OR ORGAN OR 2’ PIANO
In Honor of the 100th Anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic April 15 2012
NEW MUSIC FOR CHOIR, SOPRANO AND CELLO SOLOISTS, STRING
QUARTET, PIANO & CONTRA BASS OR KEYBOARD OR ORGAN OR 2’ PIANO
Titanic Requiem, Choral music for choir, soloists and instruments, was written in commemoration of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 in which over 1500 lives were lost. The work is as much a homage to the ship itself as to its passengers and crew. It is also a warning for our time: “Ice-fields loom large in our dark night…”
TITANIC REQUIEM SCORES AND PARTS WILL BE AVAILABLE June 1, 2011. PRICES WILL BE SHOWN IN MID MAY. THE CHORAL SCORE WILL BE PRICED AT APPROXIMATELY $4.00. PDF VERSIONS WILL BE 50% OF THE REGULAR PRICE.
For the Lyrics and Program Notes to Titanic Requiem, please click here
Titanic Requiem, Choral music for choir, soloists and instruments, was written in commemoration of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 in which over 1500 lives were lost. The work is as much a homage to the ship itself as to its passengers and crew. It is also a warning for our time: “Ice-fields loom large in our dark night…”
Titanic Requiem is for SATB choir, soprano soloist, string quartet, solo cello (the soul of the Titanic) piano and a low note source - organ, second piano/keyboard, synthesizer, double bass(es) etc. - which are at once a musical pedal and the drone of the Titanic's mighty engines. It was originally commissioned for a very modest SATB choir- one person per part! It has been revised or rather, added to, but has lost none of the accessibility or poignancy of the original work.
The text is a tender five-verse poem by Wolfgang Kater framed by the traditional Jewish introit Requiem aeternam, which also provides the text for the chants heard over the instrumental passages between the five verses. The instrumental accompaniment for these passages are improvised in sympathy with the hastily improvised rescue procedures carried out on that fateful night almost a century ago.
Synchronicity was clearly at work as Kater discovered that the instruments chosen by Mr. Patriquin for the Requiem - including the soprano soloist - turned out to be exactly those that performed on the Titanic's doomed maiden voyage. The very low notes emitted by the contra bassi/organ or piano are at once the hum of the Titanic's mighty engines as she travels to her destiny, as well as the 'pedal' support for the opening and closing prayer and the inter-verse improvisations.
Much has been written about the brave contribution of the musicians during the sinking. Whether they actually played until the bitter end is not documented; it can not be. However, that none survived and that reports that their music was heard by many as they left the great listing vessel, is alone significant. The work ends with a tribute-- a fragment of Autumn, a hymn reportedly played in the final moments of the Titanic's demise.
The musical form of Titanic Requiem is that of the great ship itself. After an optional opening hymn, Eternal Father, which was sung on board the ship during the service on the Sunday before it went down, we hear the first hint that the Titanic herself was perhaps more than just steel plating, framework and engines. We move along the ship, first hearing the drone of the mighty engines, above which the solo cello, the personification of the ship's soul, foretells its fate. The opening of the traditional Requiem aeterna begins followed by Kater's contemporary verses. In between the verses, like the ship’s four great funnels, are heard the four continuing sections of the Requiem, in Latin, over instrumental improvisations. We approach the stern, the last portion of the ship to be submerged, the symmetry now echoed in a return of the opening verse of the Requiem. This is followed by the hymn Autumn said to have been the last music played before the musicians themselves disappeared. The ship starts its final plunge, its terrible sadness echoed in the plaintive melody of the solo cello. Water closes over the great vessel, and all that is heard are the cries of gulls. Or is it something else? And then the terrible, cold and silent darkness..
Two notable performances of the Titanic Requiem were those directed by Erica Phare in the ominous ‘inverted ship’ hall of HMC Donacona in Montreal, and that directed by Susan Quinn in the great The Basilica-Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in St. Johns, Newfoundland, in the graveyard of which are buried many of the Titanic’s dead. The entire choir arrived on stage in period dress, carrying period luggage. On this occasion the engine ‘hum’ was performed on the mighty pipe organ, which was dramatically turned off just as the piece ended. The effect was breathtaking.
"I had the privilege to perform with Newfoundland’s Quintessential Vocal Ensemble in the Titanic Requiem by Donald Patriquin. This was an experience I will always treasure.”
Shimon Walt
Assistant Principal Cellist, Symphony Nova Scotia
Professor of cello, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
“From the first time I heard Donald Patriquin’s Titanic Requiem and understood the powerful imagery that it portrayed musically, I was enthralled. I had the privilege of preparing the choir for the first Montreal performance of this work. The Requiem was brilliantly paired with a first half of the program that included ragtime music from the Titanic era.
I am looking forward to programming this again very soon. It is a work that is do-able and creates so many concert possibilities.
Kudos to Donald Patriquin and Wolfgang Kater for this fascinating and well-researched contribution to choral music.”
- Erica Phare, Director of the first major performance of Titanic Requiem
Titanic Requiem CD
Conducted by Donald Patriquin
Includes:
Reflections on Walden Pond
Text- Henry David Thoreau
A Song of Peace (Nunc Dimittis); Make Me a Channel of Thy Peace
Available Now!
Titanic CD, Free with Sheet Music Order
Titanic Requiem Slideshow
on Youtube
