Messa da Requiem
is the fourth work to be published in
The Works of Giuseppe Verdi
. Following the strict requirements of the series, this edition is based on Verdi's autograph and other authentic sources, and has been reviewed by a distinguished editorial board—Philip Gossett (general editor), Julian Budden, Martin Chusid, Francesco Degrada, Ursula Günther, Giorgio Pestelli, and Pierluigi Petrobelli. It is available as a two-volume set: a full orchestral score and a critical commentary. The appendixes include two pieces from the compositional history of the
Requiem
: an early version of the
Libera me
, composed in 1869 as part of a collaborative work planned as a memorial to Rossini; and the
Liber scriptus
, which in the original score of the Manzoni memorial
was composed as a fugue in G minor. The score, which has been beautifully bound and autographed, is printed on high-grade paper in an oversized format. The introduction to the score discusses the work's genesis, instrumentation, and problems of notation. The critical commentary, printed in a smaller format, discusses the editorial decisions and traces the complex compositional history of the
.