Libera me, Domine

This substantial setting of the Requiem text, Libera me, Domine, is by the 16th-century Mexican composer Hernando Franco. Written for SATB choir, it would be appropriate for services in the liturgy for the dead, such as All Souls' Day or funeral masses. The Latin text draws from the Requiem Mass and the Sequence Dies Irae, vividly portraying the Day of Judgment with images of the heavens and earth trembling, and the world being judged by fire. Franco’s music responds to this dramatic text, beginning with pleas for deliverance from eternal death and culminating in a powerful evocation of the fearsome coming judgment before finally turning to prayers for eternal rest and perpetual light for the departed.