"...The ideas had lodged for some time. A young journalist on the Daily Express in the UK, Philip Geddes, whom Lloyd Webber knew and liked, and who had just interviewed him, was killed by the infamous IRA Christmas shopping bomb at Harrods in 1985. The composer had also read, and been affected by, a story in the New York Times about a young Cambodian boy who, having lost his parents during local insurrection skirmishes in 1984, had been forced by native terrorists to choose between killing his badly mutilated younger sister and being killed himself. He killed his sister."

The above is taken from a feature piece about Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem Mass, which was written in 1985. Not exactly the best-known of Webber's works, admittedly, and many critics regardled the collection of religious pieces as relative sacrelige from the composer of things like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. The above excerpt specifically refers to the "Pie Jesu", which is basically the only performed piece from the Requiem today.

I've always held a lot of personal significance for this particular piece of music. Elements of social justice and struggle often marry well musically, I find. I often find a lot of classical stuff hard to relate to, but this is something else entirely as far as I'm concerned. To take something as horrifying as fratricide and mass murder and to turn it into something as beautiful as this is simply a miracle, as far as I'm concerned. I hear underpinnings of loss and horror and resignation, to be sure, but the fundamental message in this music is hope. Hope in the belief that human potential for grace is everywhere. The essential message, translated from the Latin text, is simple.

Merciful Jesus, grant us peace.

This Requiem wasn't specifically intended to be religious, in spite of its obvious ties to the Catholic Mass. In this context, I feel that the piece's message is one available to anyone, regardless of any existing (or nonexistent) ties to faith.

I take great pleasure in music. I know most everyone says that, but for me it's something else entirely. It's an escape. A chance to remake myself and everything around me. A chance to get into someone's head or experience a story that only I can see. I remember, in the fifth grade, absolutely hating band class because I didn't like carrying instruments around and thought all the classes were a waste of time. Ironically enough, I can think of almost nothing else in my life that I was more wrong and shortsighted about than the role that music would play in it. To hear character and personality in harmonies and color and to get the same feeling as I would taking a warm shower at times though experiences with things like this is worth anything.