It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic. The poem describes the Last Judgment, the trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.
The first melody set to these words, a Gregorian chant, is one of the most quoted in musical literature, appearing in the works of many composers. The final couplet, Pie Jesu, has been often reused as an independent song.
Use in the Roman liturgy
The "Dies irae" has been used in the Roman Riteliturgy as the sequence for the Requiem Mass for centuries, as made evident by the important place it holds in musical settings such as those by Mozart and Verdi. It appears in the Roman Missal of 1962, the last edition before the implementation of the revisions that occurred after the Second Vatican Council. As such, it is still heard in churches where the Tridentine Latin liturgy is celebrated. It also formed part of the pre-conciliar liturgy of All Souls' Day.
In the reforms to the Catholic Church's Latin liturgical rites ordered by the Second Vatican Council, the "Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy", the Vatican body charged with drafting and implementing the reforms (1969–70), eliminated the sequence as such from funerals and other Masses for the Dead. A leading figure in the post-conciliar liturgical reforms, ArchbishopAnnibale Bugnini, explained the rationale of the Consilium:
They got rid of texts that smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages. Thus they removed such familiar and even beloved texts as "Libera me, Domine", "Dies irae", and others that overemphasized judgment, fear, and despair. These they replaced with texts urging Christian hope and arguably giving more effective expression to faith in the resurrection.[3]
In the Roman Catholic Church there was formerly an indulgence of three years for each recitation and a plenary indulgence for reciting the prayer daily for a month.[5] This indulgence was not renewed in the Manual of Indulgences.[6]
Text
The Latin text below is taken from the Requiem Mass in the 1962 Roman Missal.[7] The first English version below, translated by William Josiah Irons in 1849,[8] albeit from a slightly different Latin text, replicates the rhyme and metre of the original.[9] This translation, edited for more conformance to the official Latin, is approved by the Catholic Church for use as the funeral Mass sequence in the liturgy of the Catholic ordinariates for former Anglicans.[10] The second English version is a more formal equivalence translation.
Because the last two stanzas differ markedly in structure from the preceding stanzas, some scholars consider them to be an addition made in order to suit the great poem for liturgical use. The penultimate stanza, Lacrimosa, discards the consistent scheme of rhyming triplets in favour of a pair of rhyming couplets. The last stanza, Pie Iesu, abandons rhyme for assonance, and, moreover, its lines are catalectic.
In the liturgical reforms of 1969–71, stanza 19 was deleted and the poem divided into three sections: 1–6 (for Office of Readings), 7–12 (for Lauds) and 13–18 (for Vespers). In addition, "Qui Mariam absolvisti" in stanza 13 was replaced by "Peccatricem qui solvisti" so that that line would now mean, "You who absolved the sinful woman". This was because modern scholarship denies the common mediæval identification of the woman taken in adultery with Mary Magdalene, so Mary could no longer be named in this verse. In addition, a doxology is given after stanzas 6, 12 and 18:[4]
Manuscript sources
The text of the sequence is found, with slight verbal variations, in a 13th-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III at Naples. It is a Franciscan calendar missal that must date between 1253 and 1255 for it does not contain the name of Clare of Assisi, who was canonized in 1255, and whose name would have been inserted if the manuscript were of later date.
Inspiration
A major inspiration of the hymn seems to have come from the Vulgate translation of Zephaniah 1:15–16:
Other images come from the Book of Revelation, such as Revelation 20:11–15 (the book from which the world will be judged), Matthew 25:31–46 (sheep and goats, right hand, contrast between the blessed and the accursed doomed to flames), 1 Thessalonians 4:16 (trumpet), 2 Peter 3:7 (heaven and earth burnt by fire), and Luke 21:26 ("men fainting with fear... they will see the Son of Man coming").
From the Jewish liturgy, the prayer Unetanneh Tokef appears to be related: "We shall ascribe holiness to this day, For it is awesome and terrible"; "the great trumpet is sounded", etc.
Other translations
A number of English translations of the poem have been written and proposed for liturgical use. A very loose Protestant version was made by John Newton; it opens:
Day of judgment! Day of wonders! Hark! the trumpet's awful sound, Louder than a thousand thunders, Shakes the vast creation round! How the summons will the sinner's heart confound!
Jan Kasprowicz, a Polish poet, wrote a hymn entitled "Dies iræ" which describes the Judgment day. The first six lines (two stanzas) follow the original hymn's metre and rhyme structure, and the first stanza translates to "The trumpet will cast a wondrous sound".
The American writer Ambrose Bierce published a satiric version of the poem in his 1903 book Shapes of Clay, preserving the original metre but using humorous and sardonic language; for example, the second verse is rendered:
Ah! what terror shall be shaping When the Judge the truth's undraping – Cats from every bag escaping!
The Rev. Bernard Callan (1750–1804), an Irish priest and poet, translated it into Gaelic around 1800. His version is included in a Gaelic prayer book, The Spiritual Rose.[11]
Oscar Wilde's "Sonnet on Hearing the Dies Iræ Sung in the Sistine Chapel" (Poems, 1881), contrasts the "terrors of red flame and thundering" depicted in the hymn with images of "life and love".
It is the inspiration for the title and major theme of the 1964 novel Deus Iræ by Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny. The English translation is used verbatim in Dick's novel Ubik two years later.
The words of "Dies iræ" have often been set to music as part of the Requiem service. In some settings, it is broken up into several movements; in such cases, "Dies iræ" refers only to the first of these movements, the others being titled according to their respective incipits.
The earliest surviving polyphonic setting of the Requiem by Johannes Ockeghem does not include "Dies iræ". The first polyphonic settings to include the "Dies iræ" are by Engarandus Juvenis (1490) and Antoine Brumel (1516) to be followed by many composers of the renaissance. Later, many notable choral and orchestral settings of the Requiem including the sequence were made by composers such as Charpentier, Delalande, Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, Britten and Stravinsky. Giovanni Battista Martini ended his set of (mostly humorous) 303 canons with a set of 20 on extracts of the sequence poem.[14][15]
Musical quotations
The traditional Gregorian melody has been used as a theme or musical quotation in many classical compositions, including:
^ a bHerbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Dies Iræ" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
^Crociani, G. (1901). Scritti vari di Filologia (in Latin). Rome: Forzani &c. p. 488. LCCN 03027597. OCLC 10827264. OL 23467162M. Retrieved 2022-03-15 – via Internet Archive.
^Bugnini, Annibale (1990). "Chapter 46: Funerals". The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948–1975. Translated by O'Connell, Michael J. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press. p. 773. ISBN 9780814615713. LCCN 90036986. OCLC 1151099486. OL 1876823M. Retrieved 2022-03-15 – via Internet Archive.
^ a bLiturgia Horarum (in Latin). Vol. IV. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2000. p. 489. ISBN 9788820928124. OCLC 44683882. OL 20815631M. Retrieved 2022-03-15.
^(S. Paen. Ap., 9 March 1934). As cited in "Indulgences for the deceased: General regulations and for the month of November" (in Italian). 2014-11-02.
^(Manual of Indulgences, Section 29)
^Missale Romanum (PDF) (in Latin) (3rd ed.). Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis. 1962. p. 706. OCLC 61411326. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-02-16. Retrieved 2022-03-15.
^ The full text of Dies Irae (Irons, 1912) at Wikisource
^The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. New York City: Church Pension Fund. 1940. p. 468. Archived from the original on 2016-08-06. Retrieved 2022-03-15 – via Hymnary.org.
^"The Order for Funerals for use by the Ordinariates erected under the auspices of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum cœtibus" (PDF). Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter (in English and Latin). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-02-14. Retrieved 2022-03-15.
^Kennedy, Matthew (1825). The Spiritual Rose; Or Method Of Saying The Rosaries Of The Most Holy Name Of Jesus And The Blessed Virgin, With Their Litanies: Also The Meditations And Prayers, Adapted To the Holy Way Of The Cross, &c (in English and Irish). Monaghan: Greacen, Printer. OCLC 299179233. OL 26201026M. Retrieved 2022-03-16 – via Google Books.
^Martini, Giovanni. Canoni. manuscript. pp. 134–148. Archived from the original on 2022-10-04. Retrieved 2022-10-04.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
^Ellis, Gabriel (2018-04-05). "Breaking the canon: Padre Martini's vision for the canonic genre". Stanford Libraries Blog.
^Cadagin, Joe (August 2020). "ADÈS: Totentanz". Opera News. Vol. 85, no. 2. New York City: Metropolitan Opera Guild. ISSN 1938-1506. Archived from the original on 2022-03-16. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^"Pontins Championship 2003 – Test Piece Reviews: Resurgam". 4barsrest.com. Archived from the original on 2021-05-26. Retrieved 2021-05-26.
^Simmons, Walter (2004), Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-romantic Composers, Scarecrow, ISBN 0-8108-4884-8, retrieved 2022-03-16
^Cummings, Robert. Intermezzo for piano in E-flat minor, Op. 118/6 at AllMusic. Retrieved 2014-07-17.
^Wade, Graham. "Tedesco: 24 Caprichos de Goya, Op. 195". Naxos. Archived from the original on 2018-08-06. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^"About this Recording – 8.559635 – Daugherty, M.: Metropolis Symphony / Deus ex Machina (T. Wilson, Nashville Symphony, Guerrero)", Naxos, archived from the original on 2018-08-06, retrieved 2022-03-16
^Fischerman, Diego (2003-06-08). "El renacimiento" (in Spanish).
^Spratt, Geoffrey K. (1987). The Music of Arthur Honegger. Cork University Press. p. 640. ISBN 9780902561342. OCLC 16754628. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^Barnett, Rob. "Hans Huber" (review). Archived from the original on 2021-10-31. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^"Kastalsky, A.: Requiem for Fallen Brothers (Dennis, Beutel, Cathedral Choral Society, The Clarion Choir, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Slatkin)". Naxos. Archived from the original on 2020-08-09. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^ a b c d"Quotes – Musical Quotations of the Dies Irae plainchant melody". 2022-04-24. Retrieved 2022-06-14.
^Johnson, Edward (May 1984). "Respighi – Church Windows / Brazilian Impressions, CHAN 8317" (PDF) (Media notes). Chandos Records. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-03-16. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^Roberge, Marc-André. "Citations of the Dies irae". Sorabji Resource Site. Université Laval. Archived from the original on 2021-10-27. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^Leonard, James. Tchaikovsky: Suite No. 3; Stravinsky: Divertimento at AllMusic. Retrieved 2011-10-15.
^Lintgen, Arthur. "Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony". Fanfare (review). Archived from the original on 2018-08-06. Retrieved 2022-03-15.
^Henken, John. "Sonata in A minor for Solo Violin ("Obsession"), Op. 27, No. 2 (Eugène Ysaÿe)". LA Phil. Archived from the original on 2021-05-12. Retrieved 2020-12-04.
^"Cantata Criolla". Hollywood Bowl. Retrieved 2024-02-23.
^Gengaro, Christine Lee (2013). Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 189–190. ISBN 978-0-8108-8564-6 – via Google Books.
^"'Doctor Sleep' Soundtrack Revisits 'The Shining,' Introduces Us to New Villains". Rolling Stone. 2019-10-31.
^"Supernatural Reality: The Sound of New Hollywood Horror in Count Yorga, The Mephisto Waltz, The Exorcist and The Omen". Diabolique Magazine. 2016-06-13. Archived from the original on 2020-09-28. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^Grantham, Donald (2004), "Donald Grantham", in Camphouse, Mark (ed.), Composers on Composing for Band, vol. 2, Chicago: GIA, pp. 100–101, ISBN 9781579993856, retrieved 2022-03-16
^Webb, Martin (2019). And the Stormwatch Brews…. Stormwatch: The 40th Anniversary Force 10 Edition (Media notes). Chrysalis Records. Archived from the original on 2022-03-16. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^Cohn, Gabe (2019-12-04) [2019-11-29]. "How to Follow Up 'Frozen'? With Melancholy and a Power Ballad". The New York Times. New York City. ISSN 1553-8095. Archived from the original on 2022-02-02. Retrieved 2019-11-30.
^Chorus, David Ogden Stiers, Paul Kandel & Tony Jay – The Bells of Notre Dame (in English and Latin), archived from the original on 2021-10-16, retrieved 2021-05-12
^Tagg, Philip. "Musemes from Morricone's music for The Mission" (PDF) (analysis). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-11-12. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
^Zadan, Craig (1989). Sondheim & Co (2nd ed.). Perennial Library. p. 248. ISBN 9780060156497. LCCN 86045165 – via Internet Archive.
^Hoyt, Alia (2018-03-22), Why Sountracks love the Day of Wrath Theme (analysis)
External links
Media related to Dies Irae at Wikimedia Commons
Works related to Dies Irae at Wikisource
"Dies Iræ", Franciscan Archive. Includes two Latin versions and a literal English translation.