War Requiem by Benjamin Britten
This period during which I am continuing to send out weekly 'projects'--great pieces to study and listen to and possibly sing through--is an interesting one for me. Given that the total number of projects I've sent out during the pandemic now exceeds 280; given that I am trying to hold to the standard of sending out only extraordinarily beautiful and/or powerful and/or fun pieces; and given that I carry around in my head knowledge about only so many pieces, I find myself doing a fair amount of searching and considering before settling on each piece which becomes a project.
Often this consideration entails determining whether a given piece achieves the standard noted above; other times it's a matter of whether I feel that I can (in a limited space) do justice to a piece which I know without any doubt is a masterpiece. This week's piece falls into the latter category.
-----
With this terrible conflict going on in Ukraine, and in the midst of our 2021-2022 season, in which the Requiem Mass has played and continues to play a crucial part, I have recently been drawn to Benjamin Britten's 'War Requiem', a large-scale composition premiered in 1962 for the consecration of the new cathedral in Coventry, England. (The old cathedral had been largely destroyed in a World War II bombing raid.)
Britten's piece is enormous, both in its length and in its goals. It is based upon two texts: The Requiem text; and poems selected from the war-time poetry of Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action exactly one week before the end of World War I. The 'War Requiem' is set for an enormous ensemble including a full symphony orchestra; a separate chamber orchestra; a positiv organ; a large mixed-chorus; a choir of boys; and soprano, tenor and bass soloists.
Our Bach Choir performed the 'War Requiem' in the spring of 1999, along with the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Santa Rosa Children's Chorus, and soloists, under the direction of Jeffrey Kahane. Here's a link to a promotional piece published before the concerts (yeah, that's me looking like a teenager); and here's a link to a concert review.
-----
The experience of rehearsing and performing the 'War Requiem' was unlike any other musical experience I've had. Many of you were there and I'm sure will agree. The music is incredibly complicated and unbelievably difficult. But it is so worth it. What Britten is trying to do is to weave together an utterly sincere Mass for the Dead with a set of pieces which explore the very horror of war, of people taking the lives of other people en masse, of the tragedies and the terror and hopelessness engendered thereby within the human breast.
In the last year of his life, while on leave and while on the battlefields of Europe, Owen was preparing a publication of his war poems. The dedication which he wrote to be printed at the head of the collection reads in part:
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 consolatory. They may be to the next.
All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
I have never been in a war. But through Owen's poetry, and through Britten's music, I have learned--we all can learn--some things about war, and perhaps we can derive therefrom a deeper resolve to do what we can to prevent war in our time, and to do our best to ameliorate the effects of it when and where it descends upon humankind, as it seems to do without much respite.
-----
Thus I present to you today the 'Offertorium' from the 'War Requiem'. As you can see from the attached text-translation sheet, the piece is structured in layers. The primary passages of the Latin text--the prayers that our beloved departed souls be delivered from the agonies of hell, that they may pass from death to life--are carried by the choir of boys, accompanied by the small organ. These segments are somehow abstract, an echo of the heavenly choir which seems to lie above and beyond the action.
The large mixed chorus carries the 'Sed signifer sanctus Michael' section ('may St. Michael lead them into the holy light'), which ends with a guarantee of sorts: 'As Thou didst promise to Abraham and to his seed.' This latter section is set as a fugue, and what a fugue it is. The promise is made and confidently repeated over and over and over.
And then comes Owen's poem, 'The Parable of the Old Man and the Young', which hews remarkably closely to the story of Abraham and Isaac on the Mount, as told in Genesis 22. The tale is recounted by the bass and tenor soloists, accompanied by the chamber orchestra. The jaw-dropping difference between the poem and the biblical tale comes at the end: When God's angel appears and adjures Abraham to sacrifice the 'Ram of Pride' in place of his son, Owen closes the tale as follows:
But the old man would not so,
But slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
This shattering denouement is followed by the reappearance of the choir of boys, who sing a ghostly setting of the 'Hostias' ('Lord, in praise we offer to you sacrifices and prayers...'), accompanied by the tenor and bass soloists endlessly repeating 'And half the seed of Europe, one by one'.
Finally the large choir and orchestra reënter with the obligatory da capo of the 'Quam olim Abrahae' ('As thou didst promise to Abraham and his seed'), here utterly transformed into an empty promise, a sort of whispered burlesque of its former confident self, never rising above pianissimo, and ultimately vanishing like smoke on a breezy day at a dynamic level of pppp.
Unforgettable. Brilliant. Inspired. Indeed, 'all a poet can do today is warn'. But what a warning. And unfortunately always a propos, perhaps never more so than now.
-----
I am attaching a pdf of the piano-vocal score of the 'Offertorium' to facilitate your listening and understanding of the piece. Here is a link to a very fine live performance of the piece, cued to begin at the beginning of the movement. It is a gorgeous morning here in our beloved Sonoma County, and I can understand why you might wish to put off listening and studying this by-no-means cheerful piece of music. We all need these breaks, glimpses of normality, respites from our continuing landscape of bad news and polarization and dreadful prognostications.
But I beg you to come back to it when you can bear it. The work which our musicians and poets and other artists do does matter. But only if we pay attention.
-----
I close with lines from a poem which my mom, Jean W. Reyes, loved very much. To the day she died, Jeanie kept a poster of the poem on the wall of her flat. I still have the poster, now tattered and yellowed with age.
The poem, by Stephen Spender (1909-1995), is entitled 'The War God', and sets forth as follows:
Why cannot the one good
Benevolent, feasible
Final dove, descend?
And the wheat be divided?
And the soldiers sent home?
And the barriers torn down?
And the enemies forgiven?
And there be no retribution?
And it closes:
For the world is the world
And not the slain
Nor the slayer forgive
And it writes no histories
That end in love.
Yet under the waves'
Chains chafing despair
Love's need does not cease.
This period during which I am continuing to send out weekly 'projects'--great pieces to study and listen to and possibly sing through--is an interesting one for me. Given that the total number of projects I've sent out during the pandemic now exceeds 280; given that I am trying to hold to the standard of sending out only extraordinarily beautiful and/or powerful and/or fun pieces; and given that I carry around in my head knowledge about only so many pieces, I find myself doing a fair amount of searching and considering before settling on each piece which becomes a project.
Often this consideration entails determining whether a given piece achieves the standard noted above; other times it's a matter of whether I feel that I can (in a limited space) do justice to a piece which I know without any doubt is a masterpiece. This week's piece falls into the latter category.
-----
With this terrible conflict going on in Ukraine, and in the midst of our 2021-2022 season, in which the Requiem Mass has played and continues to play a crucial part, I have recently been drawn to Benjamin Britten's 'War Requiem', a large-scale composition premiered in 1962 for the consecration of the new cathedral in Coventry, England. (The old cathedral had been largely destroyed in a World War II bombing raid.)
Britten's piece is enormous, both in its length and in its goals. It is based upon two texts: The Requiem text; and poems selected from the war-time poetry of Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action exactly one week before the end of World War I. The 'War Requiem' is set for an enormous ensemble including a full symphony orchestra; a separate chamber orchestra; a positiv organ; a large mixed-chorus; a choir of boys; and soprano, tenor and bass soloists.
Our Bach Choir performed the 'War Requiem' in the spring of 1999, along with the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Santa Rosa Children's Chorus, and soloists, under the direction of Jeffrey Kahane. Here's a link to a promotional piece published before the concerts (yeah, that's me looking like a teenager); and here's a link to a concert review.
-----
The experience of rehearsing and performing the 'War Requiem' was unlike any other musical experience I've had. Many of you were there and I'm sure will agree. The music is incredibly complicated and unbelievably difficult. But it is so worth it. What Britten is trying to do is to weave together an utterly sincere Mass for the Dead with a set of pieces which explore the very horror of war, of people taking the lives of other people en masse, of the tragedies and the terror and hopelessness engendered thereby within the human breast.
In the last year of his life, while on leave and while on the battlefields of Europe, Owen was preparing a publication of his war poems. The dedication which he wrote to be printed at the head of the collection reads in part:
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 consolatory. They may be to the next.
All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
I have never been in a war. But through Owen's poetry, and through Britten's music, I have learned--we all can learn--some things about war, and perhaps we can derive therefrom a deeper resolve to do what we can to prevent war in our time, and to do our best to ameliorate the effects of it when and where it descends upon humankind, as it seems to do without much respite.
-----
Thus I present to you today the 'Offertorium' from the 'War Requiem'. As you can see from the attached text-translation sheet, the piece is structured in layers. The primary passages of the Latin text--the prayers that our beloved departed souls be delivered from the agonies of hell, that they may pass from death to life--are carried by the choir of boys, accompanied by the small organ. These segments are somehow abstract, an echo of the heavenly choir which seems to lie above and beyond the action.
The large mixed chorus carries the 'Sed signifer sanctus Michael' section ('may St. Michael lead them into the holy light'), which ends with a guarantee of sorts: 'As Thou didst promise to Abraham and to his seed.' This latter section is set as a fugue, and what a fugue it is. The promise is made and confidently repeated over and over and over.
And then comes Owen's poem, 'The Parable of the Old Man and the Young', which hews remarkably closely to the story of Abraham and Isaac on the Mount, as told in Genesis 22. The tale is recounted by the bass and tenor soloists, accompanied by the chamber orchestra. The jaw-dropping difference between the poem and the biblical tale comes at the end: When God's angel appears and adjures Abraham to sacrifice the 'Ram of Pride' in place of his son, Owen closes the tale as follows:
But the old man would not so,
But slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
This shattering denouement is followed by the reappearance of the choir of boys, who sing a ghostly setting of the 'Hostias' ('Lord, in praise we offer to you sacrifices and prayers...'), accompanied by the tenor and bass soloists endlessly repeating 'And half the seed of Europe, one by one'.
Finally the large choir and orchestra reënter with the obligatory da capo of the 'Quam olim Abrahae' ('As thou didst promise to Abraham and his seed'), here utterly transformed into an empty promise, a sort of whispered burlesque of its former confident self, never rising above pianissimo, and ultimately vanishing like smoke on a breezy day at a dynamic level of pppp.
Unforgettable. Brilliant. Inspired. Indeed, 'all a poet can do today is warn'. But what a warning. And unfortunately always a propos, perhaps never more so than now.
-----
I am attaching a pdf of the piano-vocal score of the 'Offertorium' to facilitate your listening and understanding of the piece. Here is a link to a very fine live performance of the piece, cued to begin at the beginning of the movement. It is a gorgeous morning here in our beloved Sonoma County, and I can understand why you might wish to put off listening and studying this by-no-means cheerful piece of music. We all need these breaks, glimpses of normality, respites from our continuing landscape of bad news and polarization and dreadful prognostications.
But I beg you to come back to it when you can bear it. The work which our musicians and poets and other artists do does matter. But only if we pay attention.
-----
I close with lines from a poem which my mom, Jean W. Reyes, loved very much. To the day she died, Jeanie kept a poster of the poem on the wall of her flat. I still have the poster, now tattered and yellowed with age.
The poem, by Stephen Spender (1909-1995), is entitled 'The War God', and sets forth as follows:
Why cannot the one good
Benevolent, feasible
Final dove, descend?
And the wheat be divided?
And the soldiers sent home?
And the barriers torn down?
And the enemies forgiven?
And there be no retribution?
And it closes:
For the world is the world
And not the slain
Nor the slayer forgive
And it writes no histories
That end in love.
Yet under the waves'
Chains chafing despair
Love's need does not cease.