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The Requiem was composed for Accordeonensemble Opus 2 to commemorate the beatification of Italian teenager, Carlo Acutis, by Pope Francis on 10 October 2020. The conservatively tonal work intersperses the Latin text of the traditional Requiem Mass with reflections on death, musical settings of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Walt Whitman, Christina Rossetti, Arthur Rimbeau, and Langston Hughes, in addition to elegiac musical interludes. The full musical program is as follows:
Praeludium (Instrumental); Requiem Aeternam (Choral); Great Death (Alto solo); Kyrie (Choral); This Is Thy Hour (Bass/Baritone solo); Requiem Aeternam (Choral); Threnody (Instrumental); Dies Irae (Choral); When I Am Dead (Soprano solo); Sentinel Soul (Tenor solo); Sanctus (Choral; Dear Lovely Death (Alto, Bass/Baritone duet); Agnus Dei (Choral); Elegy (Instrumental); Lux Aeterna (Choral); Libera Me (Choral).
John Franceschina, composer, has created scores for the National Shakespeare Company and the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, Baltimore's Center Stage, Washington's Ford's Theatre and the Arena Stage, the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Cleveland Playhouse, Florida Studio Theatre, Geva Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Papermill Playhouse, Music Theatre Works, and the Moscow Art Theatre, in addition to the Asolo State Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, where he acted as composer-in-residence from 1976 to 1993. His Fanfare for the Fiftieth was commissioned by Philippe Entremont for the fiftieth anniversary of the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra in 1985; his secular oratorio, Houtebeen, for male chorus, string orchestra and accordion ensemble, toured the Netherlands in 2014, and his opera, Scenes from the Jungle toured the Netherlands in 2019.
