This is a large-scale work for chorus, orchestra, and vocal soloists. Danielpour, who was born in New York in 1956, studied at Oberlin, the New England Conservatory, and Juilliard. His earliest mature music uses the twelve-tone system, but he soon discarded it for a tonal neo-Romantic style.

He wrote An American Requiem for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. The creative spark from his interest in conversing with American veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Danielpour had no military experience of any sort. Growing up during the Vietnam War years for some reason made it a surprise that that its veterans were not particularly different in intent or motivation than their comrades of earlier wars.

In his official notes to the work he says that instead he found the veterans of all these wars shared a "common thread" of "integrity, vigilance, and inner resolve to give of themselves...." He goes on to express the opinion that "...the soldiers who have seen action are perhaps the most qualified to be ambassadors of peace in the world, for it is these individuals who have seen firsthand the darkest side of humanity, as well as the noblest qualities inherent in mankind." Therefore, Danielpour wrote, "An American Requiem began as both a tribute to the American soldier and an examination of war."

As in the Britten work there are two male singers who are given poems in English (though Danielpour's poems are all by Americans) as texts, and a chorus that sings the Latin liturgy for the dead. He read over 500 poems in looking for texts, and chose nine. They are by Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Michael Harper, Hilda Doolittle ("H.D."), and the anonymous author of the African-American spiritual "Lay this Body Down."

The work has some of the expected ingredients of a requiem: A solemn processional "Requiem aeternam" and a percussive "Dies Irae," but it also has an unexpected jazz-blues movement. The American poems are usually inserted into relevant liturgical passages. The work is powerful, striking, and memorable; an early impression of it is that it has a good chance of becoming a piece of major importance in the American large choral/orchestral repertory.

Danielpour began writing the work in Bellagio, Italy, in September 2000, and completed the orchestration around June 1, 2001. The proofs of the orchestral score engravings were delivered to him for corrections about two months before the intended premiere, and he noticed that there was no dedication on the title page. He called his editor at G. Schirmer in New York to discuss the dedication. The person who answered the phone informed him that she had just witnessed the second of two passenger jets strike the World Trade Center towers.

"I had, in the most disquieting way, found my dedication," he wrote in notes for the premiere: "To the memory of those who died in the wake of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and in tribute to the American Soldier—past, present, and future."

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