Although he spent the middle years of his career writing operas, French composer André Campra (1660-1744) spent his youth and his old age—the years 1694-1700 and 1722-1744—as a composer of church music. His most famous work for the church, his Requiem Mass, could have come from either period. The only original manuscript comes from a volume found in a library in Campra's hometown of Aix-en-Provence, but it gives no date of composition. Some writers point out that the duet for tenor and recorder in the Agnus Dei is also found in Campra's opera L'Europa galante, but this could mean either that the mass quoted the opera or the opera quoted the mass. And while Campra's virtuoso use of the choir is similar to his use of the choir in his late motets, the theatricality of the work recalls Campra's Tancredi. But while the origins of the work are debatable, its emotional and musical effectiveness is beyond debate. Setting the Latin text to music of great variety, depth, dignity, and ultimately blissful serenity, Campra's Requiem is the greatest French setting of the Requiem before Berlioz's.

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