Requiem

So - a while back I told you guys about the Requiem I had written. A little explanation...

When I studied classical music in college, I really became entranced by composers. I wanted to be a composer. In a way, I guess am, though my compositions are different than classical composers. But when I studied those composers, I found that nearly all of them wrote Requiem masses. The reason why they did this was they were normally hired by rich people who, when a friend or family member died, would honor the dead by paying famous composers to write a great musical piece using the text from the Requiem Mass.

Over those years, I studied and sang many performances of Requiem masses and have always thought it would be cool to write one of my own. Now, that I'm in the pop/rock category, I thought it would be even cooler to write a pop/rock Requiem.

So, I took the Latin text, found several different translations and proceeded to either write songs based on the text or wrote songs using the text directly. The text is simply Scripture or adaptations of Scripture, so it was cool to dig in and try to write songs that both fit my theological place in life now and stayed true to the text.

Catholic doctrine is different in some places than what I believe, so the one text that pretty specifically spoke of Purgatory, I wrote a song based on the ideas of the text, instead of quoting the text directly.

The real recordings will have chamber orchestra and boy's choir, and they will of course sound better than the demos...but the demos I did a while back ended up very nice, I think.

Anyway, I've put the entire Requiem up over at myspace.com/chrisslighproductions.

Go, listen and let me know what you think...