And I feel fine

DID YOU KNOW? Prior to Russian spelling reform, a single letter which was necessarily appended to the end of nearly all words ending in consonants accounted for 3.5% of all Russian written text.

We're singing Benjamin Britten's War Requiem in University Chorus this semester and I have possibly never been as excited about any concert I have ever performed in. Britten juxtaposes the traditional requiem text with the poetry of Wilfred Owen, who served in World War I and wrote poetry about trench warfare and then died one week before fighting ended in 1918. He's got cred, Wilfred Owen.

So, yeah, there's a lot of trading off between the choir singing in Latin and the tenor and bass soloists singing in English about passing bells for those who die as cattle and everything. It all culminates in the extraordinary Agnus Dei, when the choir is singing about the "lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the Earth" and the tenor is just hovering over that with "One ever hangs where shelled roads part."

It's even better than Viva La Vida.

Today we were practicing the Dies Irae, and our director was talking about how most other composers like to set the day of judgment text as all screamy, like "DIES IRAE DIES ILLA QUA RESURGET EX FAVILLA!" but Britten starts it off really quiet and pulsating, and only gets loud when he's talking about the trumpet's wondrous sound. Why is that? We decided that it's because you're not ready for the judgment day. It could come anytime. So while Verdi's got his sopranos that are like, "Oh no, it's the judgment day!", Britten is like, "Great, it's the judgment day, and I wasn't ready."

It got me to thinking, because just earlier today over e-mail we were talking about World War Z, which I've never read but apparently Ben thinks that some recently-hacked road signs portend the zombie apocalypse. It got me thinking, you know, in all those zombie movies, nobody ever expects the zombie apocalypse. It just kind of happens in some small town/government research facility when you least expect it.

It's kind of like the judgment day as envisioned by Benjamin Britten.

So I have decided that my new goal in life is to compose a Zombie Requiem. It will juxtapose the traditional requiem text with quotations from Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later, and also the song "Zombie" by The Cranberries. I think this means that not only will I be prepared for the zombie apocalypse, I'll be prepared for its inevitable conclusion. Just as Britten's War Requiem was premiered for the reconstructed Coventry Cathedral in England, so will mine be premiered at the newly-reconstructed White House or something.

This is the best idea I have ever had.