by Pablo A. Tariman, VERA Files
Abaya’s passion for classical music remained one of the hallmarks of her personality. She breathed her last at the St. Luke’s hospital bed Monday night while listening to Cesar Montano sing Don McLean’s “Vincent.”
Two years before her death, Abaya admitted she was already fascinated by Mozart’s Requiem which some people always associate with funerals.
Interviewed for an All Soul’s Day story, she confided: “Mozart’s Requiem, as do all his sacred music, always pulls me away from earth and transports me to a heavenly experience. In that part called the Introitus, I associate the few notes played on a bassoon (accompanied by the string section and followed by the rest of the winds) as Mozart himself mourning his own death even before he actually expires. There is a subsequent build up with the brasses; and then the chorale storms heaven with an urgent plea, joining in the glorious Communion of Saints who begs for Mozart and for all his fellow mortals: Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ets. (Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine on them.) The Requiem does not at all sound like a funeral march. Rather, it is, at least for me, a fervent prayer for eternal life.”