The History of the Dies Irae
You’ve heard it before, even if you don’t know it. The Dies Irae chant, written for the Requiem Mass — the Mass for the dead — has inspired countless composers over time, serving as a musical quote that represents death.
Foreboding and solemn in sound, the text itself is gravely upfront in its reminders that we will all die and face God to be judged. Legend has it that, in the 6th century, Pope St. Gregory the Great received the tune for the chant from a dove that appeared from heaven. However, some historians believe the chant was penned either during the 13th century by the Franciscan monk Thomas of Celano or Dominican cardinal Latino Malabranca Orsini. Regardless, the chant continues to be used to this day for the chanted Requiem Mass in the Roman Catholic rite.
However, the tune of the Dies Irae chant is far more famous for other reasons.
Several centuries after the Dies Irae first appeared, Hector Berlioz famously used the first few notes of the chant as a motif in the fifth movement of his Symphony Fantastique. Premiered in 1830, the piece itself fantasizes a story in which an artist poisons himself with opium because his love is unrequited, and continues through his hallucinations. Innocent enough at the beginning, the artist attends a ball with his love, but then he kills her, and soon is executed for his crime. The Dies Irae chant appears in the last movement, which depicts a witches’ sabbath where the artist’s love appears as guest of honor. The critic Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl noted that he thought Berlioz would surely go to Purgatory for writing such an “abomination.”
Berlioz’s use of the Dies Irae inspired other composers to weave it into their own pieces. Johannes Brahms incorporated the chant into his Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 118, No. 6, Intermezzo in E minor, Chopin quoted it in his Prelude no. 2 in A Minor, Op. 28, and Gustav Holst included it in the fifth movement of his famous Planets suite, Saturn. Sergei Rachmaninov notably used it in multiple pieces, including his first piano concerto, all three symphonies, and his Symphonic Dances.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of Romantic era century composers who quoted the Dies Irae. Countless others found inspiration in it as a musical representation of death.
As movies made their way into the world, film composers also found the Dies Irae a great way to represent death and other related themes.
The practice began with the silent film era, but continued when sound and music were incorporated into films. Renowned classics such as Citizen Kane and Psycho used the Dies Irae as a representation of death.
John Williams alone has quoted the Dies Irae in numerous film scores, including his scores for Jurassic Park, Jaws, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and multiple Star Wars films. Hans Zimmer quoted it in his score for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides during a scene featuring the Fountain of Youth, and Howard Shore used it multiple times in his scores for The Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King, the bookends of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe contains multiple movies where the Dies Irae is quoted.
TV show scores are no exception here, either. Ramin Djawadi alluded to it at one point in his soundtrack for Game of Thrones, while Star Trek and multiple Marvel shows have also incorporated it. Even the composer for the Squid Games soundtrack used it for a theme when contestants are eliminated.
In a world so seemingly determined to ignore the realities of death and what comes after, it’s fascinating that an ancient Catholic chant has become a defining musical motif in so much of the media we consume. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
One of the beautiful things about the Catholic faith is its keen ability to face death head-on. We venerate the relics of the saints — pieces of their bones! — and we have a liturgical calendar chock-full of feast days to remember and celebrate the saints who have gone before us. We have a sacrament dedicated to the end of life (Last Rites), and another dedicated to healing us when we have spiritually died or become weakened (Confession). Most importantly, we remember Christ’s death and resurrection at every Mass and receive our Risen Lord in the real presence of the Eucharist.
Death is not the end, and we are blessed to be reminded of this in so many aspects of our faith.
The text of the Dies Irae begins with severe, blunt reminders of our impending judgement before God one day. Yet as it continues, it transforms into a prayer for God’s mercy, a mercy we know to be boundless, and ends on a note of hope: Lord, have mercy, Jesus blest,
grant them all Your Light and Rest. Amen.
I like to think that the Dies Irae, floating around our world in so many examples of pop culture, is a glimmer of that reminder, cloaked in disguise and sent undercover by God through the work of composers who, whether they know it or not, create because they’ve been made in the image of the Creator.
And that itself is hopeful, indeed.
