Many of the major American orchestras have commissioned works from Simon, but for the Requiem he sits at the piano with a small chamber ensemble. In "Light Everlasting (interlude)" Pavé recites a prayer to grant eternal rest and perpetual light while, underneath, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" whispers delicately in the piano.
Given Georgetown's Catholic roots, Simon structures his piece after the traditional requiem mass for the dead, but fills it with Black music – hip-hop, jazz and spirituals. Over pensive winds, strings and a mournful solo trumpet, the names of the family of a man called Isaac are intoned within a thicket of interlocking voices. Simon begins his Requiem with a practice we've heard too often in our own time - saying the names out loud. This is not a world created by God, this is a country created by mobs Lord have mercy on my soul, set us free, make us whole He asked the Memphis-based rapper and activist Marco Pavé to write and deliver the texts, which can sound inflammatory, consoling or prayerful, like a church service. Another result was the commission for Simon, an assistant professor at Georgetown, to compose a requiem. Children, including 2-month-old babies, were sold by Georgetown and loaded on ships to New Orleans where they were dispatched to plantations near Baton Rouge.įast-forward to 2019: Georgetown students voted to set up a University reparations fund for the descendants of the enslaved individuals and began to protest the school's troubled history. The story behind Simon's Requiem begins in 1838, in Washington, D.C., where Jesuit leaders of Georgetown College sold 272 enslaved people in order to rescue the financially strapped institution, later renamed Georgetown University. It follows in the wake of other high profile institutions – including Harvard, Columbia and the University of Virginia – admitting their own past history with slavery. The piece confronts Georgetown University's troubled past and its ownership of enslaved individuals. Next year, a large-scale tribute to George Floyd will premiere with the Minnesota Orchestra, and Simon's new album, Requiem for the Enslaved has just been released. His best known work so far, Elegy, is a string quartet in honor of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Carlos Simon is a young composer on the rise, with an ear for social justice.
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