It speaks of death and tombs, of judgment and wrath and fear and trembling. While that might sound like a description of recent news headlines, it is in fact the theme of the text for Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, or Requiem Mass, which will be performed by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, the University of Maine Oratorio Society and the University Singers on Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono.

When he scheduled the work, Maestro Xiao-Lu Li had intended the Requiem to be a powerful listening experience for the audience. With the cloud of war over the nation and Iraq, he knew that current events would resonate in the music.

“I scheduled the Verdi last year and thought this would be great for the audience to enjoy this music, but now it’s also to pay respect for people who gave their lives, who sacrificed,” said Li. “We are not for war or against war. But as an orchestra, we absolutely have to relate our music to life. If we are not connected to our society, to our country, to our patriotism, we lose the power of performance.”

As it turns out, Verdi is one of the most patriotic Italian composers. When the country was fighting for unification in the late 1850s, Verdi’s name served as an anagrammatic political slogan – Vittorio Emanuele Re d’Italia, or Victor Emanuele King of Italy – and the people shouted “Viva VERDI!” in the streets. Verdi himself was a statesman of sorts. But his lasting civic hymns were in the music. While the operas flow with political overtones, the Requiem in particular bears a history rich in lessons of national pride.

A quick background.

The towering work, which was completed in 1874, is considered one of the choral masterpieces of the 19th century. Based on the Roman Catholic Mass for the dead, it uses the ancient Latin funeral text of fire, light, darkness, heaven and hell to inspire – and frighten – worshippers to lead a more virtuous life.

Verdi, while a spiritual man, was an agnostic rather than a devout Catholic. But he was a consummate artist, and instead of writing the Requiem with the traditional intention of religious celebration, Verdi used the form to memorialize another artist, the writer Alessandro Manzoni, whose nationalistic novel “The Betrothed” had captured Verdi as a teen. The two men met only once, when Manzoni was in his 80s, and it was an inspiring occasion for Verdi. “I would have knelt in front of him, if one could adore a man,” Verdi wrote of the meeting.

Several years later, Manzoni fell down the stairs while leaving church and died. Verdi was so distraught, he could not bear to attend the funeral. Instead, he resolved to finish a score he had started years earlier for a Requiem Mass (to honor the composer Rossini). This time, he would dedicate it to his artistic hero, Manzoni.

When the Requiem premiered in Milan a year later, it was generally met with praise but a few substantial critics disparaged it as too operatic. Hans von Bulow, the virtuoso conductor, labeled it an “opera in ecclesiastical robes,” and Wagner, who was born the same year as Verdi, 1813, is said to have commented that it “is better to say nothing,” an early version of “no comment.”

But Brahms praised the huge, forceful achievement as a mark of genius. That, more than any part of the Requiem’s provenance, is why we listen to it today.

Yet in a time of wide-scale strife, especially as we near two major religious holidays, a work of grandeur and spiritual reflection can serve more than just our aesthetic and devotional needs. During last week’s choral rehearsal, Ludlow Hallman, conductor of the Oratorio Society, asked the singers to perform their parts in memory of the people who had died on both sides in the Iraqi war.

“I’m sure this is on so many peoples’ minds,” said Hallman. “So many people – innocent and not so innocent have died.” Hallman paused and added the opening line of Verdi’s work: “Requiem aeternam.”

May they rest in peace.

The Bangor Symphony Orchestra, the University of Maine Singers and Oratorio Society will perform Verdi’s Requiem Mass at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 13, at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. For tickets and information, call 942-5555.