Featured work: War Requiem, op.66
FOR SOPRANO, TENOR AND BARITONE SOLOS, CHORUS, ORCHESTRA, CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, BOYS’ CHOIR AND ORGAN
Video: Britten's War Requiem
Background
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt offering?Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) from The Parable of the Old Man and the Young (1918),
set by Britten in War Requiem
On the night of 14 November 1940 the burnt offering was Coventry Cathedral, victim of the Luftwaffe bombs.
Coventry Cathedral
The circumstances of its destruction dictated that the festival in 1962 to mark the consecration of its successor would always have a distinct soberness in comparison to the celebratory atmosphere surrounding the completion of the new cathedral at Guildford the previous year. When Britten was asked to write a work for Coventry’s new cathedral, he took the opportunity to make his most profound statement on the nature of war and it was surely inevitable that as a committed pacifist from an early age, he would seek to emphasize the building’s turbulent history. His pacifist beliefs may be traced in numerous works, either as the principal creed of a work such as Owen Wingrave (1970) or by more subtle hints, as in the closing movement of his Suite on English Folk Tunes (‘A Time There Was…’; 1974), in which Grainger’s transcription of the haunting war song ‘Lord Melbourne’ is recast as a lament of great poignancy.
The ensuing commission, War Requiem, was not the first result of Britten seizing an opportunity to promote his own viewpoint or ideology. One thinks of Our Hunting Fathers (1936), a vicious diatribe regarding man’s inhumanity to animals and men, first performed at the Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival to a scandalized audience who were anticipating a comfortable celebration of their domestic companions.
Programme book for the 1936 Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival
Also, in an interview with the New York Sun on 27 April 1940 Britten spoke of his then new Sinfonia da Requiem: ‘I’m making it just as anti-war as possible … by coupling new music with well known musical phrases, I think it’s possible to get over certain ideas … I’m quoting from the Dies Irae of the Requiem Mass’.
Dedicated to the memory of four friends, War Requiem is a profound and deeply disturbing creed, particularly notable for its juxtaposition of war poems by Wilfred Owen alongside the Catholic Mass for the Dead.
The work is scored for tenor and baritone soloists who sing Owen’s words and are accompanied by a separate chamber orchestra; a soprano soloist who stands somewhat apart and who, with the large chorus sings the words of the Mass; and a boys’ chorus at even further remove from the main world, who represent innocence and the unchanging and are mostly accompanied by chamber organ. The main orchestra is large, including triple woodwind and brass, four percussionists and a concert organ (in addition to the smaller one required for the boys’ choir). The small orchestra comprises the same instrumentation (excepting piano and celesta) employed for Britten’s chamber operas The Rape of Lucretia, Albert Herring and The Turn of the Screw: woodwind quintet, string quintet, harp and percussion.
First performance
A rehearsal for the first performance.
Britten intended that the soloists at the first performance should represent three of the nations involved in World War II: Galina Vishnevskaya (Russian soprano), Peter Pears (English tenor), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (German baritone). In the event, precisely because of this tri-national partnership of representatives, Vishnevskaya was refused permission to attend by the Russian Minister of Culture. Although she was later able to record the work, she did not sing it until 1963; her place at the première on 30 May 1962 was taken by Heather Harper.
Britten took responsibility for the chamber orchestra (the Melos Ensemble) and Meredith Davies directed the main orchestra and choir; as it happened, this was a fortuitous arrangement, since the composer was suffering from bursitis at the time and would have been unable to conduct the full performance.
Dedication
Piers Dunkerley
The dedicatees of War Requiem are:
- Roger Burney
Sub-Lieutenant,
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve - Piers Dunkerley
Captain,
Royal Marines - David Gill
Ordinary Seaman,
Royal Navy - Michael Halliday
Lieutenant,
Royal New Zealand Volunteer Reserve
Burney, a former chorister of St Paul’s Cathedral, was a friend of Pears’s who died aboard the French submarine Surcouf in 1942. Gill was killed in action in the Mediterranean. Halliday was a friend of Britten’s at his prep school, South Lodge, who was reported missing early in 1944. Piers Dunkerley, one of Britten’s closest friends, took part in the 1944 Normandy landings. Unlike the other dedicatees, he survived the war but committed suicide in June 1959, two months before his wedding. The photo shows him in his naval uniform although further details are not known.
Some further reading
- Malcolm Boyd, ‘Britten, Verdi and the Requiem’, Tempo, 86 (1968), 2.
- Mervyn Cooke, Britten: War Requiem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (Cambridge Music Handbooks)
- Jim Ellis, ‘Strange meeting: Wilfred Owen, Benjamin Britten, Derek Jarman and the War Requiem’. In: The work of opera: genre, nationhood and sexual difference, ed. Richard Dellamora and Daniel T. Fischlin. New York: 1997, 277.
- Peter Evans, ‘Britten’s War Requiem’, Tempo, 61 (1962), 20.
- A. J. Frantzen, ‘Tears for Abraham: the Chester Play of Abraham and Isaac and anti-sacrifice in works by Wilfred Owen, benjamin Britten and Derek Jarman’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies’, 31 (2001), 445.
- D. B. Greene, ‘Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem: the end of religious music (a liturgical indictment of musical aesthetics)’, Soundings, 83 (2000), 89.
- James D. Herbert, ‘Bad faith at Coventry: Spence’s cathedral and Britten’s War Requiem’, Critical Inquiry, 25 (1999), 535.
- Derek Jarman, ‘War Requiem’: the film. London: 1989
- Philip Reed, Benjamin Britten War Requiem (1961), BBC Proms 2004.
- Alec Robertson, ‘Britten’s War Requiem’, Musical Times, 103 1962), 308.
- Eric Roseberry, ‘Abraham and Isaac revisited: reflections on a theme and its inversion’. In: On Mahler and Britten: essays in honour of Donald Mitchell on his seventieth birthday, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1995, 253. (Aldeburgh Studies in Music: 3)
- H. Rowold, ‘"To achieve perfect clarity of expression: that is my aim": tradition and innovation in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem’, Musikforschung, 52 (1999), 212.
- Arnold Whittall, ‘Tonal instability in Britten’s War Requiem’, Music Review, 24 (1963), 201
Links
Recordings
Galina Vishnveskaya, Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, The Bach Choir and London Symphony Chorus, Highgate School Choir, Simon Preston (organ), Melos Ensemble, London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Britten. Decca: 414 383-2 (recorded 1963)
cover of the definitive 1963 recording by Britten
Stefania Woytowicz, Peter Pears, Hans Wilbrink, New Philharmonia Chorus, Wandsworth School Boys’ Choir, Melos Ensemble (conductewd by Britten), New Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini. BBC Legends/IMG BBCL 4046-2 (recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London 6 April 1969)
Heather Harper, Philip Langridge, Martyn Hill, John Shirley-Quirk, London Symphony Chorus, Choristers of St Paul’s Cathedral, Roderick Elms (organ), London Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Richard Hickox. Chandos CHAN 8983/4 (recorded 1991)
Lynda Russell, Thomas Randle, Michael Volle, St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral Choristers, George McPhee, organ, Scottish Festival Chorus, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. Naxos 8.553558-59.
Listen to excerpts and read reviews at the Naxos Benjamin Britten pages.
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