PeaceDocs | Music | Britten, War Requiem
Updated 11.18.09
War Requiem, Op. 66, by Benjamin Britten. Performers: Benjamin Britten (Conductor), Bach Choir & LSO Chorus (David Wilcocks), Melos Ensemble of London, London Symphony Orchestra, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Baritone) Peter Pears (Tenor), Simon Preston (Organ), Galina Vishnevskaya (Soprano). (January, 1963, reissued on Audio CD).
Britten’s War Requiem was composed for the May 1962 rededication of Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by German bombers in 1940 during “Operation Moonlight Sonata.” The piece is composed of six sections based on the traditional parts of the Christian mass for the dead: Requiem aeternam, Dies Irae, Offertorium, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and Libera me. Britten sets to music the poetry of Wilfred Owen, killed in the trenches one week before the armistice that ended WW I. Owen determined to speak the truth about war’s useless waste and destruction. For him the enemy is no more or less human than ourselves, his crimes no greater than ours. His words are sung by alternating tenor and baritone, in the roles of British and German soldiers. These are set amid the voices of the Mass itself, and in the background the ethereal, remote voices of a boy’s choir. Christian liturgy, medieval miracle play, and biblical narrative all play their part.
The last section VI, Libera me (Deliver me, O Lord), sets Owen’s “Strange Meeting.” Two soldiers meet in a tunnel beneath the lines, but as the music itself reconciles into the final choruses, the enemies realize they are both dead: they have in effect just murdered one another. But here, beyond politics and slogan, they effect real reconciliation. “I am the enemy you killed, my friend.…” As Owen warned, only admitting the truth of our own crimes will set us free and grant us peace.
