Requiem for Animals

“I have successively described it as gut‐wrenching, bold, beautiful, and brilliant. In the end, I find it a towering composition. It stands on the shoulders of giants in the sense of containing elements of classical requiems, hymnody, heavy metal, jazz, and movie scores. Musically, it is in a class all its own—fresh and new and timeless, undefinable. In its message, it is a work of purity, which invites us to assume responsibility for our treatment of animals, to acknowledge the implications of our own unconscious contributions to the suffering of others and the degradation of the planet, and ultimately, what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves. Requiem for Animals is for us human animals, too.”

— George Moore, singer, Brattleboro Concert Choir

“Keane’s piece brilliantly and brutally confronts us with a question: what is our responsibility to speak for the voiceless, to advocate for those who are considered less than, whether they are human, or a different species? The piece is a journey through that challenge, and takes us through darkness to an empowering and hopeful place. We have a choice—we can opt for caring and benevolence, rather than dominance and exploitation—and by seizing the opportunity to give voice to the voiceless, a better world is in our grasp.”

— Jonathan Harvey, music director, Brattleboro Concert Choir

"Its impact is still with me and affecting my behavior...the overall result is a sense of witnessing something remarkable...and part of what's remarkable is the impact it had on me. I was asked if I liked the evening. I wouldn't say that I liked it--as in describing it as pleasant. I would say I was moved. Touched. I would say that I appreciate it. I'd say I'm impressed. I'd say I'm in a state of awe. I'd say this is a wonderful way for art to help me see/hear/feel/know something that I need to see/heal/feel/know, but it's easier to ignore...and more pleasant to ignore. I needed this help."

— Audience member at the premiere

“There are more than a few sections that absolutely reduce me to tears. The power of what the composer writes about in words, layered over some of the most devastatingly beautiful music, is psychologically searing. Especially as the requiem’s summonings truly extend beyond the assault on the 600,000 wondrous creatures. . . . to all the marginalized peoples in our country and around the world, as the powers that be fiddle while the planet goes up in flames…I feel as though singing Requiem for Animals masterfully will both break our hearts and put them back together again.

“I am not a vegetarian, I eat fish and occasionally, I eat meat. So Keane’s libretto challenges me as well. But Keane’s genuine sense of justice and radical decency for all sentient beings connects completely with my own moral compass…To me, what Keane has given us, is every bit as valuable as [Abel Meeropol and Billie Holiday’s] Strange Fruit, [Picasso’s] Guernica, and [Neil Young’s] Ohio. It is excruciating. It is agonizing. And it bids me to feel the pain and then find my own way to heal some teeny piece of that pain, not only of the hogs, but of the whole world.”

— John Field, singer, Brattleboro Concert Choir

“Requiem for Animals is a work of great depth, pain and truth. At times it is viscerally graphic, then achingly beautiful and heartbreaking… Laced throughout the piece are the Latin words from the requiem mass, which for centuries have evoked the horrors of death, and pain of loss and grief. We cry out to mourn the dead, the multitudes of creatures that have died by the indiscriminate acts of humans… Before we can fix what has come to be, we must absorb the pain and own the suffering as our own. It is a reckoning that collectively we must feel. Requiem for Animals brings us to our knees so that we may grieve and mourn…Perhaps, if we care enough, we can change our ways and create a better world for us all.”

— Margery McCrum, singer, Brattleboro Concert Choir

"[It] was and remains spectacular, and everyone who either sang, played or listened in the audience thinks so too. It ranks right up there with the Verdi Requiem, Rostropovich playing a memorial concert for his old friend Rudolph Serkin, tears rolling down his cheeks, and Leon Fleisher playing right after he regained the use of both hands, all in that Marlboro concert hall. Your requiem deserves to be performed across the US and beyond."

— Audience member at the premiere

“At first, while I was impressed by the Requiem’s depth and scope, I worried about performing what could be seen as a divisive work at this fragile moment when connection and healing seemed to be the order of the day. My growing concern about accelerating threats to society have gotten me over those sensitivities.

And those concerns led to another opposite worry—perhaps the piece wasn’t incisive and timely enough. That while the loss of species and the inhumanity of the food system are horrible, the more proximate, arguably equally existential, challenge we face as a society is the accelerating outright cruelty to humans themselves here and abroad and the destruction of long‐standing institutions and democracy.

As I grew more comfortable with the music, I also grew confident that these early concerns were misplaced. Increasingly as I let the Requiem inhabit me and simultaneously contemplated the political zeitgeist, the more enthusiastic and moved by the Requiem I became, the more essential I feel the piece is for the moment, and the more fortunate I feel to be a part of its debut.

For me, the Requiem has become a direct statement about the condition of our culture and society. Our treatment of animals has always been at the heart of our long slide to desolation and inhumanity. And like the algorithm‐driven technologies that insulated us from the squeals of pig slaughter at the turn of the last century, the technologies that increasingly dominate our culture promise to sap further the vestiges of community, jobs, humanity and agency from our personhood. The Requiem speaks directly to the apathy, anxieties and urgency at the core of our dilemma.

Ultimately, I hope the Requiem is thought of not as a Requiem or even a Lament, but as a Marker for the moment we awakened and reclaimed the promise and responsibility of humanity.”

— Buzz Schmidt, singer, Brattleboro Concert Choir

"Simply put, we were blown away by 'Requiem for Animals' at its World premiere performed by the Brattleboro Concert Choir last Saturday evening. Indeed, it was the most powerful and inciteful musical event we have ever experienced! Thank you for all your efforts in composing such a masterpiece."

— Audience member at the premiere

“I found the Requiem for Animals chaotic and torturous when I first sang through it. I didn’t read the text except as presented in rehearsal. “Alarming,” was what I thought…I found the choral writing unnecessarily complicated.

It wasn’t until I started really studying the score that I discovered the brilliance and thoughtfulness of the writing, both orchestral and choral. Harmonic dissonance and melodic abstraction seemed consistent. I was drawn into the work almost against my will. Horror at some of the textual passages was somehow soothed by the musical setting. What at first seemed arbitrarily complex became harmony and melody that was wholly consistent with the theme of the piece.

I think the requiem has awakened an awareness that I have routinely ignored most of my life. Moral questions that I have avoided all my life linger now on the edges of my consciousness. I am emotionally challenged not only by the text but the music itself, both running on parallel courses.”

— Jon Joyce, singer, Brattleboro Concert Choir

“The work was a masterpiece!  The composer is brilliant.  The choir was magnificent.  The strings were so expressive.  This Requiem must be performed at Lincoln Center!  Keane Southard is obviously a genius.

Having followed a vegan lifestyle for years, I can say from experience that this concert has reached and moved more people than any other activity for animals that I’ve been part of, such as lab animal protests, beat hunt protests, tabling at county fairs, visiting legislators, writing letters, etc.

Keane’s music is helping animals, and I wish the Requiem for Animals will be performed all over the country and the world.”

— Audience member at the premiere

“What I’ve found so interesting is how the actual experience of singing and practicing exactly mirrors the text. Avoidance: let’s look at this later not now; Pathos and gut wrenching sympathy for the profound suffering of precious living beings, and looking squarely at my part in this; The attempt to harden myself into insensitivity in order to sing certain passages. It’s like I can’t get away from the layered complexity of these truths: no matter which way I turn I encounter one slice of the maze. Now, I can say that I feel grateful for this whole experience; the practice of holding all the complexity. Not rejecting the desire to avoid, breathing with the hard passages rather than becoming insensitive, and letting the pathos teach me to hold the two and four legged dwellers of this earth with more compassion, become more careful, conscious and responsible in my choices, and evolve towards forgiveness.”

— Wendy Osborne, singer, Brattleboro Concert Choir

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