Peace

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If you want to announce something important with the widest possible reach, you usually send a circular email. But if you are the pope, the whole thing is called an encyclical. In 1963, John XXIII addressed a message of peace not only to his colleagues in the field, but to all people of good will. It was no accident that the world was once again on the brink of nuclear war. Thanks to the French-Jewish composer Darius Milhaud, this encyclical Pacem in terris (Peace on Earth) is the first and only papal circular letter that has also been set to music. And when would a choral symphony that advocates peace in the world, respect for and observance of human rights be more important than today?

Under the impression of the First World War, Max Reger sets to music the Requiem, the Latin mass for the dead. This project remains unfinished, Reger still puts Kyrie and Dies irae on paper before his own death. It was not until more than two decades later that at least the first movement was performed: in 1938 and provided with a German text by the Nazis. Perhaps it is precisely an unfinished requiem that brings us particularly close to the horror of war, which tears so many people from their lives.