Requiem
A mass for the dead usually is called Missa pro defunctis, Missa defunctorum, Messe des morts or Requiem. The title Missa solemnis pro defunctis, chosen by Gevaert is exceptional with its reference to the solemn and festal character. One of the rare examples of the same title appeared in 1592 in the oeuvre by Lodovico Viadana.
Gevaert dedicated his mass ‘ad memoriam dilecti magistri mei J. Mengal’. His beloved teacher Martin Joseph Mengal (1784-1851) was a horn player and composer. From 1835 until his death he was the director of the Conservatoire in Ghent, the institution where Gevaert taught. The requiem mass was not the only composition in memoriam Mengal, he also composed a choir work A Mengal.

The Missa solemnis pro defunctis was composed in Brussels on 23 September 1853, during a commemorative ceremony of the victims of the Belgian battle of independance of 1830. It is not clear if the complete mass was performed. Some sources speak of “a fragment of the beautiful Requiem de F. A. Gevaert, written for four parts in a broad and severe style”.
Gevaert conceived his mass for a four-part male choir, a brass quintet (two trumpets and three trombones), low strings (celli and double basses) and organ ad libitum (“for the cities and villages where the orchestra should be lacking completely”). In the introduction the composer requests a large number of male voices. There are no

soloists; only in the Pie Jesu there is a passage for three tenors from the choir. The use of the full choir without soloists is typical for the “stile antico”, as well as the use of Gregorian chant and the strict choral writing with many homophonic passages. The reference to the Palestrina idiom in the harmony and the metre is small, but the whole is lightly flavoured with a romantic modulation. The polyphonic passages are well elaborated with for example a strong fugue in Inter oves in the Sequentia. The accompaniment is written in a more classical style, with the brass in long notes while the low strings play a supple and prominent melodic line.

The confrontation of different styles – the neo-renaissance style of the choir and the classical accompaniment with romantic influence – is as interesting as it is original.
Gevaerts historicizing setting of the requiem fits in a movement against the theatrical liturgical compositions. This movement was praised by among others the writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann, who accused in his essay Alte und neue Kirchenmusik even Haydn and Mozart of being frivolous in their compositions (only Mozart’s Requiem could find favour in his eyes). Following this conviction many composers of the 19th century revert to the Gregorian chant and the polyphonic style as the real pillars of catholic church music.