Saturday, October 22, 2011

War Requiem

My first experience with the "War Requiem" by Benjamin Britten was in 1988 when I was in forth grade. I was in the American Boychoir and singing in the balcony at the Trenton War Memorial. It had a very powerful impact on me even though I was ten and had no clue what was going on in the piece. Benjamin Britten was a pacifist, meaning that he hated war and violence of any kind. The "War Requiem" was premiered in 1962 for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral which was destroyed in the Battle of Britain during World War II. The work is a strong outcry against war. Britten lost several friends in the war, and this work is dedicated to their memories. The soloists represent people from Russia, Britain and Germany. The tenor is English, the baritone is German, and the soprano is Russian. This work is a very large scale work involving a large main orchestra, a chamber orchestra, an adult chorus, a boychoir and an organ. The texts are a mixture of poems by Wilfred Owen, and the Requiem mass for the dead. The tenor and baritone soloists sing the English texts by Wilfred Owen, and everyone else sings the Latin text. The only exception is during the Agnus Dei when a poem and the Latin text are put together. Wilfred Owen was a soldier during World War I who was killed a week before the war was over. He was a brave soldier who fought hard, but he still was disgusted by war. He describes the noises of guns and bodies laying all over the fields. The deaths of these men are meaningless until they are brought home to their families. Wilfred Owen wrote some of his most famous poems in the hospital where he was being treated for shell shock. The doctor recommended that he transform his experiences into poetry. The "War Requiem" is a work of genius from beginning to end. Britten stabs the audience in the heart with the harsh interval of the tritone. That interval represents the fear of fighting in a battle where you could get shot at any moment. Britten makes a powerful statement in this work to signify how pointless war actually is. My last experience or this piece was when I attended Peabody, and there was a workshop conducted by Britten's friend bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk. John Shirley-Quirk was about 70 years old when this workshop took place. The last two baritone solos were so hard for the participants that Mr. Shirley-Quirk started singing them himself without a score. It was just incredible. Tomorrow this worked is being performed at Avery Fischer Hall. It has been ten years since I have heard any of it live. The conductor Gianandrea Noseda has a big job to do tomorrow. He is the guy to do it. Hopefully if anyone who reads this is going, this little introduction was a helpful too.

No comments:

Post a Comment