Camille Saint Saëns - Messe de Requiem, Op. 54 (1878)

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era.

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Requiem, Op. 54 (1878)

Requiem - Kyrie (0:00)
Dies Irae (6:21)
Rex Tremendae (12:47)
Oro Supplex (16:42)
Hostias (Offertoire) (20:58)
Sanctus (23:11)
Benedictus (24:47)
Agnus Dei (26:55)

Françoise Pollet, soprano
Magali Chalmeau-Damonte, mezzo-soprano
Jean-Luc Viala, ténor
Nicolas Rivenq, baryton

'l'Orchestre National d' Île de France' and Choeur Régional VITTORIA d'Île de France :conducted by:Jacques Mercier and Michel Piquemal

Description by Joseph Stevenson
Albert Libon, a friend of Camille Saint-Saëns, provided for his one funeral music by including in his will a bequest to the composer, on condition that he write a Requiem to be performed after Libon's death. Libon died in 1877. Early the next spring Saint-Saëns travelled to Switzerland, where he composed the Requiem in eight days.

Saint-Saëns did not follow the Romantic Era's tendency to write larger, more symphonic requiems. Saint-Saëns kept his composition in a size, length, and style that would make it completely appropriate for performance in an actual requiem mass in church. It is a sorrowful piece, without the theatricality some church leaders were finding in some Requiems of the period. It is cleanly, not lushly, scored, with particularly effective use of the harps.