Since time immemorial, the response of the living to death has been to commemorate the life of the departed through ceremonies and rituals. For nearly two millennia, the Christian quest for eternal peace has been expressed in a poetic-musical structure known as the requiem.

Traditional requiem texts, among them the anonymous medieval Latin poem Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath"), have inspired an untold number of composers in different ages and serving different religions, Western and Eastern. This book, the first comprehensive survey of requiem music for nearly half a century, provides a great deal of diverse and detailed information that will be of use to the professional musician, the musical scholar, the choral conductor, the theologian and liturgist, and the general reader.

The main body of the guide is a description of some 250 requiems. Each entry includes a concise biography of the composer and a description of the composition. Details of voicing, orchestration, editions, and discography are given. An extensive bibliography includes dictionaries, encyclopedias, prayer books, monographs, and articles. An appendix lists more than 1700 requiems not discussed within the main text.

1. The Gregorian Requiem Mass
2. The Polyphonic Corsican Requiem
3. The Renaissance and the Franco-Flemish School
4. The High Renaissance
5. The Baroque Requiem
6. The Symphonic Requiem
7. Romanticism
8. The Twentieth Century
9. Dies Iraq
10. Ein Deutsches Requiem: The German Requiem
11. The Anglican Requiem
12. The Byzantine-Greek Requiem
13. The Russian Orthodox Panikhida
14. The Serbian Orthodox Requiem: Opal
15. The Armenian Orthodox Requiem
Appendix A: Dies Irae Melodies
Appendix B: More Liturgical Requiems
Bibliography
Composer Index