A Requiem Remembered: Catharsis, Lament, and Hope in Sacred Song

Derrick McQueen

A Review of the West Village Choraleʾs 2025 Winter Concert Requiem, March 22, 2025 
Judson Memorial Church, New York, NY

Throughout the centuries, varied liturgical expressions have served as tools by which spiritual catharsis with the holy can be embraced. Just such an event occurred on March 22, 2025, at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City. The West Village Chorale offered their 2025 concert entitled Requiem. The performance paired two very powerful expressions: Gabriel Fauré’s 1888 work, Requiem in D Minor (Op. 48), the Latin Mass for the Dead, and Joel Thompson’s 2014 requiem, Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, to consider the intricate power of the requiem beyond simple compositions to honor the dead.

There are many ways to remember the dead, whether by funeral events, memorial services, sitting shiva, or the gathering of friends to tell stories and remember relationships. All serve as a way to embrace the divine mystery of life and its journey as a universal human reality. Whether one is “spiritual” or “religious,” the rite of passage from life into death is often marked by guided practices and experiences that may use both sacred and secular liturgical forms.

On this particular evening, the structure of the requiem was artfully crafted to bring about a kind of catharsis: there was a pointed sense in the room that everyone left changed. Colin Britt, the artistic director and conductor of the West Village Chorale, and his team leaned heavily into two distinctive purposes of the requiem: a musical composition in honor of the dead and a solemn dirge for the repose of the dead.

Next to Gabriel Fauré’s 1888 work, Requiem in D Minor (Op. 48), Joel Thompson’s 2014 Seven Last Words of the Unarmed is a musically dense and rich piece that draws on diverse musical forms, including fugue, medieval tunes, odd 5/4 meter, Negro spirituals, musical interpretations of modern medical equipment sounds, and even Byzantine textures. All of these create a liturgical expression by setting to music the spoken words:

Kenneth Chamberlain: “Officers, why do you have your guns out?” 

Trayvon Martin: “What are you following me for?” 

Amadou Diallo: “Mom, I’m going to college.” 

Michael Brown: “I don’t have a gun! Stop shooting!” 

Oscar Grant III: “You shot me! You shot me!” 

John Crawford: “It’s not real.” 

Eric Garner: “I can’t breathe.”

These are the last words of seven unarmed African American men and boys before their lives were taken from them by gunshots and other violence. They are words that are now part of the fabric of undeniable American history. This piece brought together musically what is often so difficult to put into words as a social response to these events. As liturgy often does, the piece allowed the unspeakable to flow through the body and spirit of the audience and impacted those in attendance personally, enabling them to feel, rather than rationalize, the content.

The presence of Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, at the event contributed a powerful personal dynamic after she was introduced at the beginning of the evening. Her presence was a deeply moving embodiment of the requiem in its capacity to simply honor the dead. She was not expected to speak, to justify her emotions to the press, to answer questions, or to respond to arguments of injustice. She was welcomed into a moment in community where her son’s life mattered enough to be honored. The quiet dignity and beauty of Black mothers was a thread carried by a musical interlude, a piece of the event from Piano Quintet in A Minor by Florence Price, the first African American woman nationally recognized for her symphonic works. This piece recognized the enduring musicality of a Black mother of the symphony. Then the words of Gwen Carr’s son Eric Garner were presented as the last movement of the piece. Britt was thoughtful enough to provide a wonderful transition between the pieces.

The program notes explain the use of Fauré’s Requiem as part of an intention that “gradually lifts us from anger, sorrow and despair to consolation and even hope,” with the caveat that it “should not paper over the trauma and systemic racism” explored in The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed. Herein lies the power of pairing these two. While the form of the requiem is often thought to be associated with a funereal offering in memory of the dead, it is important to note that Fauré’s Requiem reflects his vision and belief in focusing on a gentle and more hopeful view of death. The incredible beauty of Fauré’s work carries the hearer through a request to God for mercy that leads to divine eternity and paradise. The work is not a sorrowful dirge so much as it is a way for those left behind to imagine a loved one’s—and their own—hoped-for journey to the everlasting.

This ideation alone is enough liturgical and prayerful engagement by which the audience can honor the unarmed seven into a glory-filled homecoming, despite their manner of death. The fifth movement, “Pie Jesu,” created a quiet moment by asking, “Merciful Jesus, Lord, grant them rest, everlasting rest,” leading into the “Agnus Dei” as an intercession that carried the blessing within it: “Let the perpetual light shine upon them, O Lord, with your saints for eternity, because you are merciful.” This created a sudden shift in atmosphere, causing me to realize that this requiem’s promise of hope and peace defied the very manner of death of those seven unarmed and of all the unarmed African Americans unalived throughout the history of America into recent memory. The presentation of “Pie Jesu” included an image of the seven walking together toward the light, having been blessed and guided to one another by our collective spiritual entreaty for them to experience Fauré’s release from anger, sorrow, and despair.

And then it comes. As the sopranos and altos take a seat, the basses, baritones, and tenors rise in support of the bass soloist. The first quiet measures of “Libera Me,” a response sung as part of the Catholic Office of the Dead, accompany Eric Garner himself finding his breath and standing to represent the seven to make a plea for them all: “Deliver me, O Lord, from everlasting death on that dreadful day, when the heavens and earth shall be moved, when you will come to judge the world by fire.” In the audience, tears were streaming down faces at this point, leading to sobs that continued without stopping for the entire movement.

It was here that the requiem fulfilled a rare purpose as it became the voices of the seven requesting repose. In this one movement, the two pieces embraced one another in a prayer for a state of rest for each unarmed after exertion and strain. The prayer did not lift to God their deaths only, but also their Black Lives. The movement seemed to last seven lifetimes, ending with the repeated plea of “Libera me”—“Deliver me.” And Fauré, in his mastery, satisfies the seven by bringing all into the lyrical strains of “In Paradisum” and the blessing for them all: “May the angels receive you into Paradise; at your coming may the martyrs receive you.” The Seven Unarmed are welcomed home, finally, by the longstanding liturgy of the Requiem.