The work lasts for just under half an hour, and is in four movements: Introitus, a gradual unbroken plane of sound; Kyrie, a complex polyphonic movement reaching a fortissimo climax; Dies Irae, which uses vocal and orchestral extremes in theatrical gestures; and the closing Lacrimosa, for soloists and orchestra only, which returns to the subdued atmosphere of the opening.

Composition
Ligeti was commissioned to write a work in 1961 for a series of new-music concerts on Swedish Radio. It was he who suggested a Requiem, and had initially intended to set the full text of the Requiem mass. However, he ultimately decided on setting the composition around half of the original text. Ligeti spent nine months working on the six-minute Kyrie section alone, which featured the most complex polyphony he had ever attempted, featuring twenty vocal lines, although as Harold Kaufmann notes, “it refers back… to the classical vocal polyphony of the old masters”. In particular, it drew for inspiration from the work of Ockeghem, “refracted and multiplied through the technique of micropolyphony.”

He scored the work for large choral forces, featuring two mixed choirs and soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists. The orchestra consists of 3 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling piccolos), 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet, 3rd doubling E-flat and contrabass clarinets), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 French horns, 3 trumpets, bass trumpet, 3 trombones (tenor, bass, contrabass), tuba, percussion (glockenspiel, xylophone, snare drum, bass drum, suspended cymbal, tam-tam, slapstick, and tambourine), celesta, harpsichord, harp, and strings

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FULL REQUIEM (Ligeti) Moscow 2023 Makeda Monnet, Polina Panina

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