Proposal:

We would like to create a contest for composers, inviting them to write a “Requiem” for choir and orchestra for “the People of the Mediterranean” .

The project is composed of two interwoven sections:
composition and execution.

Section one – Composition

The score will be for choir and orchestra and is meant to give life to a non-confessional text which animates the classical sequence of Requiem, giving it a new, modern and current meaning. Compositional form will be free, but the presence of a choir is required as the piece shall be a collective song of pain, protest and hope. Competitors will be invited to create a score with no formal foreclosure, with a technical content that allows the song to be sung by a heterogeneous typology of singers, and to be proposed in various and wide contexts, so that enjoyment will be guaranteed to the widest public.

The project has the aim of stimulating creativity and critical thinking and to ensure emotional involving.

Section two – Execution

The first three selected pieces will be performed in a national premiere in Rome.

Once the Examination Committee has been set up, timing and modes of participation will be specified. Call for Proposals will be probably announced on

The Commission, having examined the various compositions, will choose the winner by rewarding the first three with a monetary prize.

In a second phase, through web advertising, a date for the “Night for Migrants” will be identified. During this night, Choirs and orchestras from all over Europe and the Mediterranean shore of Africa will perform the “Requiem for the People of the Mediterranean”, celebrating together a collective ritual of remembrance, testimony and active participation.

On this night we will ask to light a lamp in every area along the Mediterranean shores.

The “Night for Migrants” might become a ritual moment on every year, offering us the inspiration to be present, debate, and question ourselves.

The Examination Commission

The Examination Commission will be composed of 5 influent members: composers, orchestra directors and representatives of the Italian cultural world.
We have already received adhesion from M° Caraba, Battistelli and Busto.

The Committee of Honour

We are setting up a prestigious Committee of Honour.

The Promoting Committee

The proposal takes its shape within the Association for Research in Interpersonal Psychotherapy, an association of professionals that has also founded the SSPIG (Specialization School for Interpersonal and Group Psychotherapy) which operates in training and social issues in Rome and in Palermo.
The SSPIG is directed by a team of qualified psychotherapists, teachers and supervisors who, starting from a decade of training, research and experimental practice in the clinical field, have extended their training offer to Sicily.

We decided to get involved in this project as the tragedy we are relentlessly witnessing in the waters of the Mediterranean sea requires words, rituals and ways to be processed, thought, shared, and stopped.

Through the composer’s creative act it is possible to try to contain, process and sing in a transformative way pain and horror, death and life, hope and faith. Sounds, chords, voices, musical timings, rhythms, musical keys that weave melodies and harmonies. Musical textures that speak to women and men of what we are witnessing today. Musical textures able to speak to each and every one, on any shore of the living Mediterranean sea: music and songs that speak to children, to the young and to the elderly, to different cultures, to the many religious beliefs and ethnic groups of the Mediterranean.

A composition that binds and mixes differences and dissonances, exalting them as only music does so harmoniously.

This is why ARPI will be joined by professional or amateur chorists, Directors and musicians who share a passion for music and choral singing.

We have put together relationship, knowledge and competences in order to develop the different sections of the project and we have coordinated them and developed ways and forms through which we can give life to our intention.

We are now reaching Maestri, Orchestra Directors and Musicians who can evaluate the pieces we will receive.

Rita Inglese
for ARPI and for the Project Committee