Search - Kleiberg, Kiss, Washington Cathedral Choir :: Requiem (Dig)

This powerfully emotional Requiem for the victims of Nazi persecution was commissioned in 2001 in the wake of 9/11. Glasgow Poet Laureate Edwin Morgan provides poetry that is coupled with traditional movements of the Requiem mass. Kleiberg uses the Latin-texted choral movements to create a backdrop for the detail of Morgan's English-language characters. The subjects are the non-combatant victims whose lives have been rendered valueless. Kleiberg sees the ultimate cause of genocide not in xenophobia or anti-Semitism, but in humankind itself, in the name of progress and in the confident rationality of "men who would play God."