I began my studies back in June 2019, initially as a full-time student, but more recently, with the pressures of work, I’ve shifted to part-time. This means that I have until 2027 to complete.
With a thesis of around 70-80,000 words and a 40-minute ‘Requiem’, this is clearly a work in progress; I will keep you posted on how things are developing. With the thesis, I don’t want to post early drafts, which I’ll only rewrite or throw away. So, for now, here is the opening of the Introduction, which is really the Proposal. The Thesis is titled:
Passing Notes: Using Ritual Theory and Dramaturgy to Understand and Develop the Narrative of the Requiem as a 21st Century, Non-Religious, Musical Funeral Rite.
This thesis asks and attempts to answer three basic questions:
a) Within the context of unbelief, where there is no afterlife in the spiritual-religious sense, what does it mean to compose a Requiem?
b) Such a requiem requires a different narrative to the traditional religious funeral rite, so, given the requiem’s purpose of bringing an understanding of death and, at the same time, comfort to the grieving, what musical and textual features are needed in order to achieve this?
c) Can responses to all the above issues provide a route to creating a new, practical, non-religious musical funeral rite?
Theism suggests a belief in a spiritual higher power and within that is generally accommodated some notion of an afterlife. This may be in the form of a version of the redemptive Heaven or Paradise (or indeed Hell), or a type of reincarnation or progressions of reincarnations. Whatever it is, this notion is central to religious belief and these post-death journeys, in the form of stories/narratives, are clearly part of religious funeral rites. However, if one does not accept there is an afterlife or any sense of redemption or spiritual progress of any sort beyond death, then what is the story/narrative? What text would this work contain and what function would the music serve in supporting this story/narrative? Funeral rituals serve many purposes, including bringing comfort to the grieving; how might this aspect of the rite be served within this work? Given that the title of the rite comes from its opening line: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine (Eternal rest grant them O Lord), then what might such a work be called?
