For Us the Living: Requiem in Memory of William and Ethel Lamere

Webpage by Clifford Lamere   7 Feb 2010, revised 17 Aug 2017

For Us the Living: Requiem in Memory of William and Ethel Lamere was composed by Alfred V. Fedak.  I approached him about 2004 after a classical concert.  By that time, I had already sung and very much enjoyed his Praises with the Burnt Hills Oratorio Society, and many of his church anthems with the Blooming Grove Reformed Church choir in Defreestville, Rensselaer Co, NY.   

Al liked the idea of this commission, but was busy with other obligations at the time.   He started work on the requiem in 2006 and it was premiered April 22, 2007 at the Union College Memorial Chapel, Schenectady, NY.  Rand Reeves was the conductor of the Burnt Hills Oratorio Society and a 29-piece orchestra, although not all instruments played this requiem.  I honored my parents by being a member of the chorus.

Rand Reeves conducting the Burnt Hills Oratorio Society and orchestra.

World premiere April 22, 2007 at Union College, Schenectady, NY

Al Fedak at the organ (on left)

Photo supplied by Chris Jones

A second performance of the requiem took place November 22, 2010 at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Albany, NY where Al Fedak is Minister of Music and Arts.   Susan Hermance Fedak, his wife, conducted the chorus and chamber orchestra which included Al Fedak at the organ.  I was again part of the chorus of this beautiful work.  Had my father lived, he would have been celebrating his 99th birthday on that day.  The concert date was selected without knowledge of this fact.  How is that for an amazing coincidence?  

Many people have told me how beautiful this composition is.  I think I can explain why.  When I commissioned Al Fedak to compose the Requiem, he told me that he had been thinking about composing one for his own parents.  I told him to write it for my parents, but to be thinking about his own parents as he did so.  It is very obvious that he put much love into this Requiem.

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Albany, NY 

(2nd performance, November 22, 2009)

Below, you have the choice of hearing the Requiem in one continuous play, or listening to individual tracks.  In both cases, the recording is from the premiere at the Union College Memorial Chapel.

Click on a rosebud below to hear that section of the composition.  To the right of the title of the section are the words for that section, and even farther to the right (possible off the screen) is the translation of the Latin and Greek portions of the text.  At the bottom of this webpage is a pronunciation guide to the Latin and Greek words, followed by notes about the Requiem by the composer.

To listen to the Requiem and see this webpage at the same time

After clicking on a rosebud (or the rose above), a media player will open up and start playing. 

     In the browsers Firefox and Chrome, the player controls are on a black screen, but on the same tab.  If you use the back arrow to return to this webpage, the player stops.  If you return to the media player, it has been reset to the beginning of the piece.  To see the webpage as the music plays, you must open another tab.  Then, copy the address of this webpage and paste it into the second tab's address bar.  Then, as the music plays on one tab, you can switch to the other tab without stopping the music.

     In Internet Explorer, a media player opens up in a separate window.  If it is minimized in order to see the webpage, the music continues playing. 

     I am not familiar with what happens in Apple products.

In the words of the Composer:

     For Us the Living was commissioned by Clifford Lamere of Albany, New York, to honor the memory of his parents, William and Ethel Lamere. But while the work was intended as a memorial to two specific individuals, its message is universal. For although it fully acknowledges the twin realities of death and grief, For Us the Living is meant to serve as a grateful affirmation of the gift of life, and as an expression of comfort, consolation, hope, and encouragement to all who have suffered loss. It is, quite literally, a requiem for us, the living.

     The title, of course, is drawn from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which (to paraphrase) admits that there is, in truth, very little which we the living can do to honor our departed loved ones, except to commit ourselves to the noblest principles by which they lived, and to complete the work which they left unfinished. Simply put, we best honor our dead by the way we live.

     The work's opening movement quotes the Eastern Orthodox Kontakion for the Departed: "All we go down to the dust, yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia." While this opening sentence is, in reality, a death sentence, at its heart lies a heroic existentialism: there is something persistently and joyfully defiant about singing Alleluias at one's own grave, or for that matter, at the start of a choral requiem.

     For Us the Living was conceived as a concert work, but none of its words would seem out of place at a church funeral or memorial service. To the traditional liturgical texts (Introit, Kyrie, Sanctus and Benedictus, Pie Jesu, and Agnus Dei) I have added, besides the Orthodox verse quoted above, a setting of Psalm 23, and a final section called "Valediction" (meaning a leave-taking or farewell), which includes two passages from the Apocrypha: the well-known Justorum animae ("The Souls of the Righteous") from the Book of Wisdom, and a verse from the book of Tobit. The closing measures of the Agnus Dei further underscore the work's real intent: the prayer’s final petition, "Dona eis requiem" (grant them rest) becomes "Dona nobis requiem" -- grant us rest.

Visitors since 7 Feb 2010