TR reference to "Dies Irae" which pops up in other books

[Mark Kohut]

And this...eliminated from overt liturgies and missals by Second Vatican Council 
for these reasons:

Nevertheless the same body felt that the funeral rite was in need of reform and 
eliminated the sequence as such from the Masses for the Dead. A leading figure 
in the post-conciliar liturgical reforms, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, explains 
the mind of the Cardinals and Bishops who were members of the Consilium:
They got rid of texts that smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the 
Middle Ages. Thus they removed such familiar and even beloved texts as the 
Libera me, Domine, the Dies Iræ, and others that overemphasized judgment, fear, 
and despair. These they replaced with texts urging Christian hope and arguably 
giving more effective expression to faith in the resurrection.[3] 




----- Original Message ----
From: Edward A Moore <edmoorester at gmail.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Mon, July 4, 2011 5:55:47 PM
Subject: TR reference to "Dies Irae" which pops up in other books

"Dies irae" means "day of wrath in latin. . .

TR p796

"—Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla . . .
Tell me, did they sing that out here?
—Where?
—The Mass, you said you had a Mass sung for the dead.
They sing that sometimes, in Masses for the dead, swinging the
censer to kill the smell of the living."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_Irae

In Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining, the main theme is based on
Hector Berlioz' interpretation of the Dies Irae as he used it in his
"Symphonie fantastique".

Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel V. includes direct references to Dies Irae
in chapter 9:
"Somewhere in the house (though he may have dreamed that too) a chorus
had begun
singing a Dies Irae in plainsong

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used the first, the sixth and the seventh
stanza of the
hymn in the scene "Cathedral" in the first part of his drama Faust (1808).

Symphonie Fantastique: Dies Irae
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od7KTNOzQi8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This is the first stanza of the poem "Dies Irae":

"Day of wrath! O day of mourning! See fulfilled the prophets' warning,

Heaven and earth in ashes burning!"

And these are Berlioz's own program notes:

"He sees himself at a witches sabbath, in the midst of a
hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of
every kind who have come together for his funeral.
Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts
which seem to be answered by more shouts.

ed