Rosetta Requiem was inspired by the religious tradition of the Requiem which, traditionally, is a musical composition that honours the dead.
Rosetta Requiem differs from this tradition by honouring those living with life threatening illness. It is an ongoing project based in the network of 20 UK hospices where Rosetta Life run residencies.
What is Rosetta Life?
Rosetta Life is an organisation of professional artists that enables people with life-threatening illnesses and their families to explore experiences of significance through video, photography, drama, music, poetry, dance, fiction and other digital art forms. The resulting artwork is produced to the highest feasible artistic level and shared electronically through the Rosetta Life website and at live Celebration Events across a network 0f 20 hospices in the UK.
What is a Requiem?
The great Requiems of Mozart and Verdi explore the cycle of suffering, death, grief and acceptance that frame the act of dying. Requiem is the first word of Catholic Requiem Mass and means repose. A musical requiem is usually for the repose of the souls of the dead.
But many composers have interpreted Requiem more loosely. In this spirit, our hospice users, composers, and filmmakers shape less solemn responses to the Requiem, with the emphasis very much on the force of life rather than death.
