Requiem

Karl Jenkins completed his Requiem in 2005, after the death of his father, and built it on a collision of texts: the Latin Missa pro defunctis interleaved with five Japanese haiku on death, sung in Japanese and accompanied by the shakuhachi. The Dies irae is scored with taiko drums; the Benedictus is given to solo cello. The mixture follows the method of his earlier choral works — a familiar liturgical spine opened up to material from outside the Western tradition — and the piece was taken up quickly by amateur choral societies, which are its main constituency.