(Lat.: ‘day of wrath’).
The sequence of the Mass for the Dead (LU, 1810).
The text of the Dies irae, attributed to Thomas of Celano (d c1250), is thought to have grown out of a rhymed trope of the responsory Libera me, of which the verse ‘Dies illa, dies irae’ begins with the same melodic phrase as the sequence (ex.1). Thomas's poem has 18 rhymed stanzas (17 tercets, one quatrain), to which a later anonymous author added the final unrhymed couplet with ‘Amen’. Its musical form, which incorporates more repetition than the standard sequence (see Sequence (i), §9), may be represented as follows: AABBCC/AABBCC/AABBCDEF. Since the second phrase of B is identical with the first phrase of A, and since the second phrases of D and E are the same, not to speak of other resemblances, the degree of melodic unity is high. The poem began to be included in the Requiem Mass in Italy from the 14th century and in French missals of the late 15th century. It was one of the four sequences retained by the Council of Trent (1543–63), but it was not incorporated into the Roman Missal until the papacy of Pius V (1570).
Before the Council of Trent the Dies irae was not normally set polyphonically; Antoine Brumel's Requiem was exceptional in containing such a setting. Ockeghem, at the end of his lament on the death of Binchois, Mort, tu as navré/Miserere, set a slight variant of the final couplet of the sequence to a paraphrase of the chant. There are also settings by Giammateo Asola, Orfeo Vecchi, G.F. Anerio and G.O. Pitoni in their requiem settings.
Whereas in the 16th century and often in the 17th polyphonic settings of the Requiem had the Dies irae sung to the plainchant melody, or alternated verses of plainchant with verses of polyphony, orchestral requiem settings written after 1700 almost invariably include the entire sequence. Indeed, there is a tendency for the Dies irae to assume a central position, partly because of its length but equally because of the dramatic possibilities it offers to the imaginative composer. Though influenced by Michael Haydn’s Requiem composed in 1771 for Archbishop Schrattenbach of Salzburg, the Dies irae of Mozart’s Requiem (1791) was perhaps the first to aim at a truly graphic representation of the text, effectively contrasting such sections as ‘Rex tremendae’ and ‘Recordare’. Cherubini’s C minor setting (1816), with its opening gong stroke, attempts the kind of dramatic expression which is best realized in the requiem settings of Verdi (1874) and Britten (1962). The settings by Fauré (1888) and Maurice Duruflé (1947) achieve a more devotional spirit by omitting from the Dies irae everything except the last line, which in each case is set as a separate movement following the Sanctus. Several composers (e.g. Giovanni Legrenzi, Antonio Lotti and J.C. Bach) have set the Dies irae as an independent piece.
Pizzetti’s unaccompanied Requiem (1922) uses almost the entire plainchant melody for the sequence, but this is rare in post-Classical settings. The plainchant has, however, been much cultivated by composers of secular music, who have traded upon its association with Thomas of Celano’s vivid portrayal of the Last Judgment and its ability to inspire listeners (at least in Catholic countries) with a feeling of terror appropriate to a particular context. Since Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (1830), a rich and productive symbolism has grown up round the ancient melody, embracing not only death and the fear of death, but also the supernatural (Bantock’s ‘Witches’ Dance’ in Macbeth, 1926; Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, 1874), political oppression (Dallapiccola’s Canti di prigionia, 1938–41; Ronald Stevenson’s Passacaglia on DSCH, 1960–62), and even ophidiophobia (Respighi’s Impressioni brasiliane, 1928).
Composers who have used the plainchant in this way have usually quoted only the first phrase and sometimes only the first four notes. For this reason it is not always certain whether a reference to the plainchant is intended, even where it is apt. Rachmaninoff, for example, in several of whose works the opening notes can be heard, may have intended its use only in the late Paganini Rhapsody and Symphonic Dances. Composers have also sometimes given the title ‘Dies irae’ to works that use neither the sequence text nor the plainchant melody, for example the second movement of Britten’s Sinfonia da requiem (1940) and Penderecki’s Dies irae (1967). The latter, written to commemorate those who died at Auschwitz during World War II, is a setting of words from the Bible, ancient Greek drama, and modern French and Greek poets.
R. Gregory: ‘Dies irae’, ML, xxxiv (1953), 133–9
F. Wanninger: Dies irae: its Use in Non-Liturgical Music from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (diss., Northwestern U., 1962)
M. Boyd: ‘“Dies irae”: Some Recent Manifestations’, ML, xlix (1968), 347–56
K. Vellekoop: Dies Ire Dies Illa: Studien zur Frühgeschichte einer Sequenz (Bilthoven, 1978)
J. de Clerck: ‘Le Dies irae indépendent, du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle’, Revue des archologues et historiens d'art de Louvain, xiii (1980), 108–26
JOHN CALDWELL (1), MALCOLM BOYD (2)