John Rutter: Requiem with The Motet Choir and House of Hope Chamber Orchestra
Requiem was written in 1985 and first performed in October of that year. Following the precedent established by Brahms and Fauré, among others, it is not strictly a setting of the Requiem Mass as laid down in Catholic liturgy, but instead is made up of a personal selection of texts, some taken from the Requiem Mass and some from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The seven sections of the work form an arch-like meditation on the themes of life and death: the first and last movements (Requiem aeternam and Lux aeternam) are prayers on behalf of all humanity, movements 2 and 3 (Out of the deep and The Lord is my shepherd) are Psalms, 3 and 5 (Pie Jesu and Agnus Dei) are personal prayers to Christ, and the central Sanctus is an affirmation of divine glory.
– Program note for Requiem by John Rutter