This requiem is for voice and piano. It uses lyrics that are adapted from a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, and also features a section from the traditional latin Roman Catholic Mass.

The piece is not a complete requiem and is only partially based on the Latin text. The lyrics are largely an adaptation of a short poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, also entitled Requiem. I have also used the Latin text in the middle of the work though. The requiem was not written for anyone in particular. However, at the time I had been inspired by Faure's requiem, and was also interested in doing some vocal compositions. I had also received news that a young boy of my age who I had once attended school with had passed away because of cancer, though very few people even knew that he was ill as it wasn't common knowledge. It also made me aware of how it must feel to lose a loved one in the first place, and one so young - a friend of mine's cousin had also lost a long battle with Leukemia over summer and know I appreciate to a greater extent what he must have been going through.

The text of this song by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894), an American poet.
Appropriately it was Stevenson's own short poem, ‘Requiem’ (1880, from an 1887 collection), that was written on his tomb:
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie...

The text of "Requiem" by Stevenson:

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

The text of this poem has been used by Sidney Homer, Charles Ives, Ned Rorem, Ernest Whyte, Jonathan Lovenstein, Edward Bell, David Bedford and Luke Zaccaro.