A composer who is adored by the public, but not quite one of the great masters.
We can all picture the romantic image of a composer who, possessed by angels and demons, writes the greatest masterpieces, experiences soaring highs and crushing lows, ruins his health, and dies young. Luigi Cherubini does not exactly fit that image. He was born in Florence in 1760 and did not die until 1842 in Paris! Throughout that time, he was always a respected and often celebrated composer.
If you live that long, you’ll experience quite a lot. When he came to Paris in 1785, King Louis XVI was still on the throne. In the years that followed, Cherubini witnessed the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the Consulate, the Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, and the July Revolution. All very different regimes, each with a major influence on society and on the kinds of music that were in demand.
Artistically, there were many changes. Cherubini witnessed the entire transition from Classicism to Romanticism up close — from the earliest stirrings under Sturm und Drang to the accessible salon style of Romanticism from Chopin and Mendelssohn. In fact, he contributed to that transition himself. Many Romantic composers cited Cherubini as an inspiration. Beethoven even considered him the greatest composer alive!
Although Cherubini also wrote instrumental music, his greatest significance lies in vocal music. For much of his career, that meant operas. He wrote dozens of them, and they are seldom performed today. Some have even been lost. It’s probably due to their weak librettos, because musically they are every bit as good as any other.
Eventually, this repertoire went out of fashion. Therefore, Cherubini decided to take a different course: he began writing church music. Gradually, this was allowed again, and after the Restoration it was even highly desirable. As a result, he received the commission to write a requiem for the old King Louis XVI. In 1793, that king was sent to the guillotine. Even in 1816, that was still reason enough for the king and the church to revisit the matter. They had regained power and wished to make that known: the disgrace of this regicide had to be commemorated with a mass!
Cherubini’s Requiem No. 1 in C minor (after that, he wrote a second one shortly before his death, intended for his own funeral) has remained popular since its premiere. After Mozart’s Requiem, it’s probably the most popular mass for the dead from the Classical period. It has been praised as a masterpiece both now and two hundred years ago.
The greatest significance of this work does not lie in its innovative idiom. Certainly, the music is modern, but not groundbreaking for 1816. Above all, it is the power and control that make this work so impressive. Like most requiems, it begins quietly. In the Dies irae, the terror of Judgment Day is evoked in a strikingly vivid way. Despite its terrifying text, the sequence does not overflow with hellish music. No, after the first trumpets, the music calms into something reassuring. Only toward the end doubt creeps back in. The Pie Jesu, which many composers made serene and soothing, sounds uncertain and heavy-hearted here. It is precisely this alternation between mournful and consoling music, between heavy and lighter tones, that makes this requiem such a balanced composition — a balance that many other requiems cannot match!
In addition to the requiem, this programme also features a funeral march by Cherubini. This work was composed around the same time, in 1820.
