Mozart Requiem: Agnus Dei—with video chat

Agnus Dei—d minor-larghetto—¾—45 mm.

Agnus Dei— Fireside chat video

Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei.  Zurbarán was the most important religious painter in Spain during the 1600s.Zurbarán spent most of his life in Seville, surviving a viral epidemic that decimated the city in 1649.

The Agnus Dei invokes Christ in his aspect as the (sacrificial) Lamb of God, and asks again for eternal rest for the souls of the righteous.

The Agnus Dei opens with eight impassioned forte first beats shifting to piano second and third beats—waves of dynamic changes in the orchestra's turbulent D minor chords and descending scales the choir, underpin the bold, somber, forte chordal declamations:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi

Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world

The first seven measures in D minor pivot to a halt on the dominant, A, M9. A dramatic silence or two rests for the choir, one for the orchestra.

With no announcement, the lower strings, piano assai, pulse F octaves, Letter I, M10. The lower strings move pitch, but stay in the subdued key of F through M19. Over this open octave bass line, the choir, piano,

pleads

Dona eis requiem sempiternam.

Grant them eternal rest.

Letter K, M17: the return of the opening cries "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi".

Letter L M25: now, again without announcement, in C major, piano assai:

Dona eis requiem

Grant them rest.

Letter M, M34, forte:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi

Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world

M41 then Letter N, in B flat pianissimo (the only pp in the Requiem?) orchestral bass alternating between G flat and F:

Dona eis requiem (sempiternam.)

Grant them (eternal) rest.

M45: e diminished 7th chord in first inversion. an extraordinary and unprecedented landing, somewhat unstable, before the request for sempiternam.

Sempiternam, a compound of semper (“always”) and aeternus (“eternal”), is appropriately long-drawn-out.

M50: Coming to rest on F, now in its guise as the dominant of B flat, the chord introduces the Lux aeterna, the repeat of the music of movement 1, from m19, Adagio, with the Requiem aeternam text, sung first by the soprano soloist.

The choir enters at Letter O, M8 with the same music at Movement 1, Letter C, M26, now singing an extra eighth note in each part, to accommodate the text:

Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine!

Let eternal light shine on them, Lord!

cum sanctis tuis in aeternum

with your holy ones in eternity

quia pius es.

since you are pious.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,

Grant them eternal rest, Lord.

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

and let perpetual light shine  on them.