Various - Arnold Rosner: Requiem, Op. 59

Far from being a treatment of the usual Latin, the Requiem of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945�2013) sets spiritual and secular texts on death from a number of the world�s cultures, including Whitman, Villon, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a sutra from Zen Buddhism and the Jewish Kaddish. The work of a young man (Rosner was 28 when he wrote it), this Requiem is both monumental and wildly energetic � but it also encompasses passages of transcendent beauty. His musical language clothes the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colours, producing a style that is instantly recognisable and immediately appealing. Some of the music was first written for an aborted operatic treatment of Ingmar Bergman�s film The Seventh Seal, where the main character plays chess with Death; in like spirit, Rosner�s Requiem is a major statement of human defiance in the face of mortality, even if its gentle closing pages bring uneasy acceptance