La Messa di Requiem di Pizzetti, tra riforma ceciliana ed echi verdiani

The Reale Accademia Filarmonica Romana commissioned Ildebrando Pizzetti with the composition of the Messa di Requiem to celebrate the birth anniversary of King Umberto I. The Messa was first performed at the Pantheon (Rome) on March 14, 1923, during a private, non-liturgical ceremony, at the presence of King Vittorio Emanuele III. By retracing the creative context of the work and focusing on some passages of the score, the essay offers a reinterpretation of the Requiem aimed at highlighting two main points of reference of the composer’s poetics. The first is the Motu proprio “Tra le sollecitudini”, a document issued by Pope Pius X in 1903, which started a new course in liturgical music. Pizzetti was well aware of this document, having learned its founding principles from his teacher Giovanni Tebaldini. The second, which mainly surfaces in the Libera me section, is Giuseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. The influence of this model is analysed taking into account Pizzetti’s comments in his introduction to the facsimile of Verdi’s score, published by Ricordi in 1941 (La religiosità di Verdi: introduzione alla Messa da Requiem).