Carr: Requiem for an Angel

Description

It is inevitable that at some point in our lives we are faced with situations and events which may alter our daily routines and so change the way we feel and think about our own existence. This certainly was the case with me following the death, in 2005, of my Mother. A few months prior, my brother Gavin suggested that I might like to write a work for his choir, the Athenaeum Singers of Warminster. Despite not being a religious person in the formal sense of the word, I felt strangely drawn to writing a Requiem as it gave me the opportunity to express my love and gratitude to a woman who gave me everything. I wished to avoid the terrors of the Last Judgement and preferred my work to be an intimate one, reflecting feelings of peace, love and compassion. Therefore, I chose not to follow the standard Requiem Mass but have included words from other literary sources; a poem by St.Teresa of Avila and a love poem by the American poet Jack Larson, a poem written to another man but with words applicable to anyone, and not least to God. Paul Carr