Popov A. Requiem for four voices, authentic instruments, prepared piano and metronome. Score

Alexander Georgiyevich Popov (born in 1957) is the Petersburgian composer, author of symphonic compositions, chamber-instrumental and vocal music.

Alexander Popov tries to solve the problem of relations between the Human Being and the Time in different aspects of this word’s meaning, i. e. the course of time and its perception, concentration and rarefaction, accelerations and stops. Thus all these relations grow at last to the contiguity between the Time and the Eternity on the one hand and between the Human Being and cultural heritage (including musical one) nowadays. The composer resorts to various cultural traditions, e. g. the European Middle Ages, the Rennaissance, the Oriental Nirvana music and ecclesiastic Armenian music. Popov is the laureate of the “International Tribune of Composers” (Paris, 1995). Among his works there are the silent film “Earth” (produced by Alexander Dovzhenko), which the composer wrote music to and “Johan” (produced by Moris Stiller), ordered by the German TV programme ZDF/ARTE. 

The Requiem for four voices, authentic instruments, prepared piano and metronome was composed by Alexander Popov in 1989. Its first performance took place in 1993 at the festival “Petersburg Music Spring”.

Those were the concerto “Passion”, Sinfonia Brevis, vocal cycle to the anonymous Italian Renaissance poets “About Life and Death” to have appeared before the Requiem. Then there followed Sinfonia da camera dedicated to Girolamo Frescobaldi's memory (the movements of which are called “Madrigal” and “Ricercare”), “Theory of Affectation” for instrumental ensemble, Chamber cantata “W” for contra tenor and octet to the folk Slavonic texts about the Doomsday and the Concerto for violin and instrumental “Utopia”.