Historical Background
Benjamin Britten's War Requiem was commissioned for the reconstruction of St. Michael's Cathedral, Coventry, which was destroyed during the Battle of Britain in World War II. The work was first performed in May 1962 at the rebuilt Cathedral which stands beside the ruins of the medieval structure.
In the late 30's, Europe's increasingly somber political picture had quite an effect on Britten, who composed several pieces specifically for use in peaceful endeavors. By 1939, the political climate had become so uncomfortable for Britten that he finally left Britain for America, intending to become a citizen (1, 36-7). That same year, Britten dedicated The Ballad of Heroes to the memories of the British Battalion, International Brigade, who had died in Spain (2, 25), foreshadowing the dedication of the War Requiem. His Sinfonia da Requiem, too, is infused with a sense of the "terror and ghastliness of war" (2, 33).
Britten's lifelong pacifism is evident in his response to the commission for the Coventry Cathedral. Knowing that his work would be heard by many people, Britten created a work for the occasion that would express in a new way the futility and senselessness of war, while conveying his "deep sympathy with man's self-inflicted suffering" (3, 123), a sympathy Britten had long felt. He achieved this with "a stroke of imaginative genius" (3, 123), by placing texts from the traditional Latin "Mass for the Dead along side the bitter poetry of Wilfred Owen, a World War I soldier who was killed one week before the Armistice. On the frontispiece of the score, Britten quotes Owen: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity . . . All a poet can do today is warn" (4, Score). Britten dedicated the work to four friends who had been killed in World War II.
From the first performance, the work was critically acclaimed as a masterpiece, as described by Christopher Headington:
As with A Midsummer Night's Dream, critical opinion of the War Requiem was unanimous. "A major masterpiece," was Frank Howes' simple phrase, while in the view of Percy Young the composer here achieved "a breadth of expression that puts the work among the major achievements of religious art." The Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Arthur Bliss, not long after this and in my hearing, described Britten as England's greatest composer. (3, 123)Britten also conceived of the War Requiem as a healing work, deliberately choosing soloists from countries involved in the war, the solo parts were specifically for soloists of British, German, and Russian ancestry; they were Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Diskau, and Galina Vishnevskaya, respectively.
Overall Structure
The overall structure of the War Requiem is clearly stated in Britten's score, and is an integral part of the work's message. By using three distinct ensembles, Britten conveys the text on several different planes, highlighting the irony of the juxtaposed lyrics. Each subgroup of performers represents a different level of expression within the work: the ritualized liturgy of grief, the angry irony of war's destruction, and the eternal hope of mankind.
The large orchestra and chorus, with soprano soloist, are traditional celebrants of the Mass and present the formal, ritualized expression of mourning using the ancient litergy from the Missa pro Defunctis. The tenor and baritone soloists portray British and German soldiers, respectively, and are supported by a smaller chamber orchestra. Their text in Owen's insightful, poignant poetry. The last group is a chorus of boy's voices with organ accompaniment; their portrayal of innocence and hope remains curiously devoid of of human emotion, adding to the pain and detachment war creates, They interject with words of inspiration and solace, but their physical placement and the intense irony of the text that make up the bulk of the work overpowers their words of comfort.
Britten indicates that the three subgroups of musicians are to be placed physically separate from each other in performance; ideally, the boy's choir and organ are to be the furthest removed from the rest of the performers. The physical arrangement that results is one of mutual indifference, so it seems the individual ensembles are unaware of each other. This effect underscores a terrible irony of war -- that the warring entities, even among themselves, are unwilling to listen to each other.
This physical arrangement is concisely stated and interpreted in Lemond's' 1967 article:
The work is conceived upon three planes or levels of expression, each fulfilling a neeed in the total expression of the pity of war. The first might be called the life of the here and now, one in which there is death and loss of talent and potentualities through the grief and emotions brought about by war. The shame of the common cause of destruction and man's inhumanity epitomized by war becomes the agonized cry of the victims and those left behind to mourn. This musical plane is achieved through the poetry of Owen with the tenor soloist representing the English soldier and the baritone soloists representing the German soldier. On this level of intensity, the chamber orchestra requires only 16 to 20 instrumentalists.The second level uses the text of the Requiem Mass itself, sung by the soprano soloist and chorus, with full symphony orchestra sharing the drama of the act of the Mass itself, interacting upon the lamentations of the living for the dead, the liturgical plea for deliverance, and a reassurance of the ressurection as the promise of eternal life.
The third level, requested by Britten to be apart from the other levels, is cast as a part of the text from the mass, first with the singing of the hymn of praise by the youths, using the innocence of the child's voice with only the sound of the organ and then joining the other planes for the "in paradisum" of the "Libera me" and the "Let us sleep now" text of Wilfred Owen. (5, 23)
William Hall notes, "The contrast of the liturgy of the Church and the poems of war is reflected at many levels in the music. It is through this stark transition from the sacred to the the appeal of secular man that one realizes the degree of complexity throughout the War Requiem" (6, 123).
Britten's Textual Settings
The texts of the Latin Requiem Mass and Wilfred Owen's poetry are woven together both musically and thematically.
The first movement, "Requiem Aeternam/What Passing Bells," uses the the tolling of the death-knell to align the traditional mass text with the poetry of Wilfred Owen. Although not unstructured, it sounds rhythmically free, alternating between 5/4 and 4/4 time signatures. The full choir begins the first part, gently pitting sopranos and tenors against altos and basses, who are answered by the baritone's lament for soldiers lost to war, and his expression of sorrow that they are so casually laid to rest. The second section is introduced by the treble choir (boys I and II) in fast-changing rhythms accompanied by the small organ and unison strings. This leads back to the opening statement, which is now more fully developed; then the first of Owen's poems is sung by the tenor soloist. Britten ingeniously incorporates the boys' choir's theme with the tenor text: "Not in the hands of boys".
Britten unifies the movement with the tritone of F# to C (a prominent motive throughout the piece) and closes with an unaccompanied choral Kyrie.
We hear the soprano for the first time, enforced by horn and woodwind swirls, singing the liturgical text Liber scriptus proferetur ("Lo! the book exactly worded"), a section in the Dies Irae movement of the work. This section is organized in a loose binary structure, with a reduced chorus answering an earlier line, quietly concluded by the soprano.
In contrast to the soprano's supplication for pity and salvation in Liber Scriptus Proferetur, Owen's own "Out There, We've Walked Quiet Friendly Up to Death" portrays the simultaneous insolence and naivete of soldiers in the face of Death. The lively duet between tenor and baritone is grimly jocular, as the soloists consider the ease in which soldiers mingle with Death each day, treating the specter as if he were indeed their companion in war. In the end, Owen comments on the underlying farce of war, as the music's texture grows thinner and thinner: "We laughed, knowing that better men would come/And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags/He wars on Death -- for Life; not men -- for flags" (7, Liner notes).
The Recordare follows, uniting the women in a biting commentary of the futility of war. Highly imitative in tonal design, it is one of the finest choral settings of the entire work, according to Paul Henry Lang:
The Recordare is an example of choral writing at its best. Britten stands here, as well as in the ineffably gentle Lacrimosa, beside the great masters of this art, of whom England had a generous share in the past but none since the death of Handel. (8, 511)
The serenity of this chorus is violently interrupted by the men of the choir on the text Confutatis maledictis, with the brass motive brutally punctuating the text. The momentum is abruptly interrupted by the baritone solo "Be Slowly Lifted Up," Owen's angry comment on the deadly shaft of cannon being prepared to fire. The raising of the cannon appears musically in an ascending figure in the orchestra, and is answered by the return of the tumultuous Dies Irae from the full chorus and orchestra, expressing with traditional liturgy the furious anger of the poet Wilfred Owen and an angry God; it is possible that Britten's personal objections are expressed here, too.
The soprano sets the wistful, dreamlike tone of the Lacramosa section with a delicate melody spanning the descending line of a ninth. The movement continues with the poignant tenor solo "Move Him into the Sun." Here, Owen's text conveys a quieter anger, its final lines a tortuous expression of bewilderment and defeat upon the reality of death: "Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides/Full-nervedÑ still warmÑtoo hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made this fatuous sun-beams toil/To break earth's sleep at all?" (9, 40). In this movement, juxtaposition of texts is especially wrenching, as the poet wonders aloud why mankind bothers to strive at all. The full choir's joyous covenant of redemption Sed signifer sanctus and lively fugal setting of Quam olim Abraham is set in contrast with the Owen text "So Abram Rose," a retelling of the Biblical story of Abraham's sacrifice of his son, Isaac. This part of the movement is one of the the remarkable marriages of the Latin text and Owen's poetry" (6, 134).
Mr. Owen, in the poem "The parable of the Old Man and the Young," had paraphrased the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, which for him represents the sacrifice having actually taken place in defiance of the divine message from the angel. Britten uses the concluding line in the poem three times ("But the old man would not do so, but slew his son, and half the seed of Europe one by one") with six interpolations by trebles (boys) on the Hostias text, "We offer unto Thee, O Lord, sacrifice of prayer and praise." (6, qtd. in Robertson, Requiem, 277)
The repetitions of the poem's final line, cited above, sound rhythmically erratic and jerky against the boys' smooth interjection on behalf of the dead, asking that they be brought from death to eternal life. This mood of instability is furthered heightened by the fact that the boys' part is set in a different key and time signatures.
In the pivotal movement of the work, Agnus Dei, Christ's sacrifice, resignedly stated by the chorus, is hauntingly paralleled in Owen's elegy for the death of innocent soldiers in "One Ever Hangs." Owen suggests that soldiers, like Christ, are among those who "love the greater love . . . [and that they] Lay down their life; they do not hate" (9, 48). The irony of texts in this movement is almost too bitter to bear; Britten ends the movement with a lyrical ascending figure, Dona nobis pacem, the tenor's only use of Latin in the work. The movement is unified throughout by a smooth ostinato pattern in the strings, beginning on a descending F# and ascending from C.
Britten's use of the tritone here recalls other moments in the work, but resolution here in the form of the final F#major chord (from which the tenor's Dona nobis pacem arises), is perhaps an expression of Britten's personal hope for peace.
The final movement, Libera me, begins with the percussion in a steady accelerating, march-like tempo and introduces the woodwinds and voices in a plaintive cry for deliverance Britten "creates a sense of urgency and drive which explodes in a final statement of Libera me . . . the excitement of this statement is encouraged not only by full orchestra fff, but by Britten's first use of full organ (fourteen measures) leading to the tenor and baritone statements from Owen's 'Strange Meeting' " (6, 141).
This movement constantly reminds the listener of the tritone F#-C, in the tenor voice. Owen's dialogue, set as if the soldier's speak from the life hereafter, ponders the causes of morning and concludes "I am the enemy you killed, my friend./I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned/Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed./Iparried; but my hands were loath and cold" (5, 23). Britten interrupts the last statement two times with bells ringing the tritone F# and C again, and closes with the supplication for peace, Requiescant in pace, Amen, Amen.
Throughout the War Requiem, Britten uses the boy's choir to portray innocence and hope, and the soprano/chorus ensemble interjects traditional words of solace from the liturgy; however the irony of these comforting notions in contrast to the tale of the British and German soldiers is relentless. Although we are led believe that these innocents achieve eternal rest at the end (In Paradism), it does not appear to be a rest free from melancholy and wistfulness; the reappearance of the tritone contributes to the sense of unease.
The anger and sadness of Owen's poetry is quite powerful on its own, but Britten's brilliant combination of traditional Latin text and Owen's words bring a new poignancy and tragedy to the grief of war, because Britten so skilfully portrays both the individual and universal effects of war's destruction.
Works Cited
1. White, Eric Walter. Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 2nd ed. Ed. John Evans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
2. ---. Benjamin Britten: A Sketch of His Life and Works. 2nd ed. London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1954.
3. Headington, Christopher. Britten. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982.
4. Britten, Benjamin. War Requiem, Op.66. Miniature Score. London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1962.
5. Lemonds, William W. "Benjamin Britten's War Requiem." The Choral Journal. (Sep.-Oct. 1967): 23.
6. Hall, William Dawson. "The Requiem Mass: A Study of Performance Practices from the Baroque Era to the Present Day as Related to Four Requiem Settings by Gilles, Mozart, Verdi and Britten." Diss. U of Southern California, 1970.
7. Palmer, Christopher. Liner Notes. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. CD. London 414 383-2LH2, 1985.
8. Lang, Paul Henry. "Current Chronicle: Lennox, Massachusetts." Musical Quarterly XLIX (Oct. 1963): 510-4.
9. Palmer, Christopher., ed. The Britten Companion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.