Artwork: Object: Mozart chantant son Requiem (Mozart sings his Requiem). British Museum.

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The rites and ceremonies surrounding funerals, requiems, and end of life events have some of the most moving settings in all sacred music. This page focuses primarily on the Requiem Mass, although many of the resources below will also cover music for the Rite of Burial and the Office of the Dead.

For more information on the requiem sequence, see the page for the Dies Irae.

Gregorian chant

The Requiem Mass, or the Mass for All Souls’ Day on November 2, has its own gregorian settings for the propers and the ordinary. Sheet music for these can be found at the following websites:

“Gregorian Propers • St. René Goupil Gradual.” Corpus Christi Watershed. http://www.ccwatershed.org/goupil/.

“Chant Sheets for the Orations and Readings.” Windsor Tridentine Mass Community. http://www.windsorlatinmass.org/latin/chant.htm.

“Masses for the Dead “. In Liber Usualis, 1806-18, 1961. https://musicasacra.com/music/latin-settings/.

Polyphonic settings

The Requiem Mass has been set to music so many times that it is a genre unto itself. The website Requem Survey currently lists over 5,000 settings.

“Requiem Survey.” http://www.requiemsurvey.org/about.php.

Klugewicz, Stephen M. . “The Top Ten Greatest Requiem Masses.” The Imaginative Conservative (January 26 2016). https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/01/top-ten-greatest-requiem-masses-stephen-klugewicz.html.

“Music for the Requiem Mass.” In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_for_the_Requiem_Mass.