How do life and death serve each other?
The Requiem Auream emerged from the question, “How do life and death serve each other?” It is music about letting go of old self-images, about the transformation of fear into trust, and of confinement into luminous expanse.
The work understands death not as an end, but as a passage: as a movement from darkness into the golden, from fragment to whole. The music follows the inner dynamic of spiritual transformation – a path that begins in silence, leads through pain, and opens into a new radiance.
The work is built like a cathedral of sound. Its structure forms a cross of horizontal and vertical time:
The horizontal axis – the seven Latin choral movements of the Requiem – carries the liturgical arc from Introitus to Libera me. It represents earthly time, history, the movement through life and dying.
The vertical axis consists of the six Intermezzi with texts from the Sermon on the Mount, as well as the two meditations at the beginning and end. It opens the space upwards and downwards: as a descent into the depths of the soul and an ascent into the light.
At its center is the Lacrimosa – the golden heart of the cross. Here, pain and transfiguration, human and divine, earth and heaven touch.
“Thank you for the incredible emotions you gave me. This is a high and demanding art. The memory of this day will stay with me my whole life.”
“My utmost respect to Mr. Schmidt-Hartmann for the composition (…) I was so captivated by the work, as well as the professional performance, that I listened to the second performance too. It testifies to great skill to compose such a work, and the theoretical aspects described in the program booklet also impressed me greatly.”
Listen to the Requiem Auream in the YouTube playlist.
