Darkness Gives Way to Light

Composer John Rutter’s Requiem isn’t about doom and gloom

J.P. Williams
This Side of the Flood
Dec 26, 2024

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Capital depicting the Resurrection, ca. 1480-1500. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

After an ominous intro, darkness gives way to light in English composer John Rutter’s Requiem (1985). In this context, the chorus’s Kyrie eleison is less a plea for mercy than a celebration of mercy received. According to Credo, the website for the Dallas Community Choir, the composition was first performed at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church, fitting since that denomination’s founder John Wesley, perhaps looking to 1 John 1:5, often called God the “Father of Lights.” Here is that light, building to a climax in “Lux aeterna.” Many call Christianity a death cult, but a world of difference exists between the Medieval church’s fetishization of the gore of the crucifixion and the post-Reformation’s proclamation of the crux uninhabited. Dies irae becomes Dies est lætitiæ, wrath becomes joy.

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J.P. Williams
J.P. Williams

Written by J.P. Williams

Writer and translator. Some scheduled posts may go up, but I'm barely here at the moment.

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