Introduction
Once in a while a musical work captures the spirit of the times and the hearts of its listeners so profoundly that it becomes a 'classic'. So it has been with Britten's War Requiem.
Britten composed the War Requiem for the re-consecration of Coventry Cathedral, where it was first performed on 30 May 1962. On a personal note, I heard this premiere on the radio. A young girl, already contemplating a musical career, I was stunned, but didn't have the experience to explain why. Now some forty years and a musical education later, there seems so much to say. Ultimately, Britten's music will speak for itself. The following notes attempt to comment on why the War Requiem is so very different from what went before and why it speaks so directly to us today.
The Latin Mass for the Dead is usually said or sung on All Souls' Day or in memory of a particular individual. The War Requiem reduces the twelve parts of the Mass to six sections, by cutting some such as the Gradual and Tract, and combining others.
There is a long history of setting the Requiem Mass to music stretching back to Ockeghem in the 1400s and beyond. Britten's War Requiem has in part much in common with other well known settings – for example, the dramatic effects of Berlioz or Verdi, and the lyricism – though not the same sense of consolation — as the Fauré. It is, however, uncompromising in its stance – the senselessness of death through war.
Britten interspersed the Latin Mass for the Dead with nine poems by Wilfred Owen. Born in Shropshire in 1893, Owen had enlisted in the Artists' Rifles and been invalided out of the First World War in 1917, only to return to France, win the Military Cross, but be killed shortly before the Armistice. There is no glory in the subject matter of his war poetry, nor self-aggrandisement:
I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
Blending poetry and liturgy was not new. Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem of 1936, for example, used Walt Whitman's poems, and interestingly in a similar vein of warning about the dangers of war. What is different is the perfect match between Britten's philosophy – his pacifism and his concern for loss of innocence, which we see also, for example in his operas Peter Grimes and Billy Budd – and Owen's refusal to see honour in war.
What also sets the War Requiem apart is Britten's creation of three spheres of influence through this textural blending. The War Requiem calls for vast resources: a symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra, organ, three vocal soloists, a boys choir, a full mixed voice choir and three conductors. The way the work is scored creates a number of contrasting partnerships, almost like being in three different time zones. Thus the main choir, soprano soloist and full orchestra sing the Latin Mass – on earth, so to speak.
But the departed – the soldiers and victims of war – are also present through the Owen poems performed by tenor and baritone soloists and chamber orchestra. Meanwhile, the boys choir and organ – both physically and musically detached from the other performers – conjure up an ethereal, other-worldly plane.
Britten was very specific in wanting his soloists to comprise a Russian soprano (originally to have been Galina Vishnevskaya but replaced by Heather Harper at the premiere), a German baritone (originally Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau) and an English tenor (Peter Pears). In this way Britten unites former protagonists in a symbolic reconciliation – we all share the futility of war – just as the Exeter Festival Chorus, Yaroslavl Glas Choir and Hanauer Kantorei have done in this collaborative project.
The War Requiem is not a comfortable piece. Britten's musical language may soothe, but it also shocks. It akes the listener face the reality of war – its squalor as well as its pointlessness. The orchestral 'sound effects' create a very literal interpretation of the score – almost like a film score, with guns and shells firing overhead, bells tolling and substantial brass fanfares. Britten doesn't give his voices an easy time either. Vocal lines often contain awkward leaps and entries, which also intensifies the sense of tension.
Britten's harmonies are shifty and ambivalent. Whole-tone scales feature prominently, as does one particular interval – the augmented fourth from C natural to F sharp. Known as a tri-tone because it contains three whole tones, it creates an eerie, homeless feel.
The result is a challenge to the senses and few people come away from a War Requiem performance unmoved.
