As I’m working on some research this morning, I’m listening to Rutter’s Requiem. Rutter mixes aspects of the Catholic Requiem Mass with some texts from the Book of Common Prayer. A Requiem is a Christian funeral liturgy. There are aspects of Rutter’s setting that are somewhat dark and intense, though never so broken as something by, say, Arvo Part. The truly moving of Rutter’s setting, though, is the Kyrie. It resolves beautifully into a melodic, major tonality. The sense is not of desperately pleading “Kyrie Eleison” (“Lord have mercy”), but rather of experiencing a mercy already known. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been feeling a little wiggy this week and wrestling with my faith a bit, but when I heard Rutter’s Kyrie this morning I could close my eyes, take a deep breath, and feel it massaging those deep knots in my soul.
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