War Requiem | |
---|---|
by Benjamin Britten | |
Opus | 66 |
Occasion | Consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral |
Text |
|
Language |
|
Composed | 1961 | –1962
Dedication |
|
Performed | 30 May 1962 |
Scoring |
|
The War Requiem, Op. 66, is a choral and orchestral composition by Benjamin Britten, composed mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. [1] The War Requiem was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, in the English county of Warwickshire, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I.
Britten scored the work for soprano, tenor and baritone soloists, chorus, boys' choir, organ, and two orchestras (a full orchestra and a chamber orchestra). The chamber orchestra accompanies the intimate settings of the English poetry, while soprano, choirs and orchestra are used for the Latin sections; all forces are combined in the conclusion. The Requiem has a duration of approximately 80–85 minutes. In 2019, Britten's 1963 recording of the War Requiem was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [2]
The War Requiem, first performed on 30 May 1962, was commissioned to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original 14th-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The reconsecration was an occasion for an arts festival, for which Michael Tippett also wrote his opera King Priam . [3]
Britten, a pacifist and conscientious objector, was inspired by the commission, which gave him complete freedom in deciding what to compose. He chose to set the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead interwoven with nine poems about war by the English poet Wilfred Owen. Owen, who was born in 1893, was serving as the commander of a rifle company when he was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal in France, just one week before the Armistice. Although he was virtually unknown at the time of his death, he has subsequently come to be revered as one of the great war poets.
Philip Reed has discussed the progression of Britten's composition of the War Requiem in the Cambridge Music Handbook publication on the work. [4] Britten himself acknowledged the stylistic influence of Requiems by other composers, such as Giuseppe Verdi's, on his own composition. [5] David B. Greene has discussed Britten's 'indictment' of religious music in this work. [6]
Britten dedicated the work to Roger Burney, Piers Dunkerley, David Gill, and Michael Halliday. Burney and Halliday, who died in the war, were friends of Peter Pears and Britten, respectively. According to the Britten-Pears Foundation's War Requiem website, Dunkerley, one of Britten's closest friends, took part in the 1944 Normandy landings. Unlike the other dedicatees, he survived the war but took his own life in June 1959, two months before his wedding. None of the other dedicatees have known graves, but are commemorated on memorials to the missing. [7]
The musical forces are divided into three groups that alternate and interact with each other throughout the piece, finally fully combining at the end of the last movement. The soprano soloist and choir are accompanied by the full orchestra, the baritone and tenor soloists are accompanied by the chamber orchestra, and the boys' choir is accompanied by a small portative organ (this last group ideally being situated at some distance from the full orchestra). This group produces a very strange, distant sound. The soprano and choir and the boys' choir sing the traditional Latin Requiem text, while the tenor and baritone sing poems by Wilfred Owen, interspersed throughout.
The full orchestra consists of the following instrumentation.
Woodwinds
| Percussion
| Keyboard
|
The chamber orchestra consists of the following instrumentation.
Woodwinds
Brass | Percussion | Strings
|
The work consists of six movements:
The interval of a tritone between C and F♯ is a recurring motif, the occurrence of which unifies the entire work. [8] The interval is used both in contexts that emphasize the harmonic distance between C and F♯ and those that resolve them harmonically, mirroring the theme of conflict and reconciliation present throughout the work. [9] The Requiem aeternam, Dies irae, and Libera me movements end in a brief choral phrase, consisting mainly of slow half notes, each first and second phrase ending on a tritone's discord, with every last (i. e. third) phrase resolving to an F-major chord; while at the end of the Agnus Dei the tenor (in his only transition from the Owen poems to the Requiem liturgy, on the key words, Dona nobis pacem – Give us peace) outlines a perfect fifth from C to G before moving down to F♯ to resolve the chorus's final chord. At the end of the Dies irae, the tenor sings (from Owen's "Futility") "O what, what made fatuous sunbeams toil, to break earth's sleep at all?" The notes of "at all" form the tritone and lead into the choir's formal resolution. In the final Owen setting, "Strange Meeting", one of the most prominent expressions of the tritone is sung by the tenor, addressing an opposing soldier with the words "Strange friend". This poem is accompanied by sporadic detached chords from two violins and a viola, which include the tritone as part of a dominant seventh chord. At the end of the poem, the final string chord resolves to the tonic, bringing the work to its final, reconciliatory In paradisum. On a more practical level, Britten facilitated musical execution of the tritone in the closing bars by having the F♯ sung in one voice, but the C in another. [10]
Four other motifs that usually occur together are distinct brass fanfares of the Dies irae: a rising arpeggio, a falling arpeggio followed by a repeated note, a repeated fourth in a dotted rhythm ending in a diminished arpeggio, and a descending scale. These motifs form a substantial part of the melodic material of the piece: the setting of "Bugles sang" is composed almost entirely of variations of them.
Another linking feature can be found in the opening of the final movement, Libera Me, where the slow march tune in the double basses (preceded by two drums outlining the rhythm) replicates the more-rapid opening theme of the first poem, Anthem for Doomed Youth.
One striking juxtaposition is found in the Offertorium, a fugue in the repeating three-part-time scheme 6
8, 9
8, 6
8 where the choir sings of God's promise to Abraham ("Quam olim Abrahae promisisti, et semini eius" – "which you once promised Abraham and his seed"). This frames Owen's retelling of the offering of Isaac, in which the angel tells Abraham to:
'... offer the ram of pride instead of him.'
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
and half the seed of Europe, one by one.
As the male soloists sing the last line repeatedly, the boys sing "Hostias et preces tibi, Domine" ("Sacrifice and prayers we offer thee, Lord"), paralleling the sacrifice of the Mass with the sacrifice of "half the seed of Europe" (a reference to World War I). The "reprise" of "Quam olim Abrahae" is sung in inversion, diminuendo instead of crescendo.
The whole of the Offertorium is a reference to Britten's earlier Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac from 1952. Britten here uses much of the musical material of the earlier work, but the music in the Requiem is twisted into much more sinister forms.
Although there are a few occasions in which members of one orchestra join the other, the full forces do not join until the latter part of the last movement, when the tenor and baritone sing the final line of Owen's poem "Strange Meeting" ("Let us sleep now ...") as "In Paradisum deducant" ("Into Paradise lead them ...") is sung first by the boys' choir, then by the full choir (in 8-part canon), and finally by the soprano. The boys' choir echoes the Requiem aeternam from the beginning of the work, and the full choir ends on the resolved tritone motif.
For the opening performance, Britten intended that the soloists should be Galina Vishnevskaya (a Russian), Peter Pears (an Englishman) and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau [11] [12] (a German), to demonstrate a spirit of unity. Close to the premiere, the Soviet authorities did not permit Vishnevskaya to travel to Coventry for the event, [13] although she was later permitted to leave to make the recording in London. With only ten days' notice, Heather Harper stepped in and performed the soprano role. [14]
Although the Coventry Cathedral Festival Committee had hoped Britten would be the sole conductor for the work's premiere, shoulder pain forced his withdrawal from the main conducting role. [15] He did, however, conduct the chamber orchestra, and this spawned a tradition of separate conductors that the work does not require and Britten never envisaged. [16] The premiere took place on 30 May 1962, in the rebuilt cathedral with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Meredith Davies [17] (accompanying soprano and chorus), and the Melos Ensemble, conducted by the composer (accompanying tenor and baritone). [18] At Britten's request, there was no applause following the performance. [19] It was a triumph, and critics and audiences at this and subsequent performances in London and abroad hailed it as a contemporary masterpiece. [20] Writing to his sister after the premiere, Britten said of his music, "I hope it'll make people think a bit." On the title page of the score he quoted Wilfred Owen:
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity...
All a poet can do today is warn.
Because of time zones, the southern hemisphere premiere was about 12 hours ahead of that in North America, though they were on the same day, 27 July 1963. The southern hemisphere premiere was at the Town Hall in Wellington, New Zealand, with John Hopkins conducting the New Zealand National Orchestra (now the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) and the Royal Christchurch Musical Society, with soloists Peter Baillie, Graeme Gorton and Angela Shaw. [21] The North American premiere was at Tanglewood, with Erich Leinsdorf conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra with soloists Phyllis Curtin, Nicholas Di Virgilio, Tom Krause and choruses from Chorus Pro Musica and the Columbus Boychoir, featuring boy soprano Thomas Friedman. [22]
The Dutch premiere took place during the Holland Festival, in 1964. The Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Radio Choir were conducted by Bernard Haitink; the chamber orchestra (consisting of Concertgebouw Orchestra instrumentalists) by Britten himself. The soloists were Vishnevskaya, Fischer-Dieskau and Pears, in their first public performance together.
The English Chamber Choir performed the work at Your Country Needs You, an evening of "voices in opposition to war" organised by The Crass Collective in November 2002.
To commemorate the eve of the 70th anniversary of the destruction of the original cathedral, a performance of the Requiem took place in the new cathedral on 13 November 2010, [23] featuring the soprano Claire Rutter, the tenor Daniel Norman, baritone Stephen Gadd, The Parliament Choir, Saint Michael's singers, Deutscher Chor London, the ESO Chamber Orchestra, The Southbank Sinfonia and Coventry Cathedral Girls' Choir. It was conducted by Simon Over and Paul Leddington Wright. [24] A recording was made and broadcast a day later on Classic FM. [25] A second performance with the same performers took place on 17 November 2010 at Westminster Cathedral. [26]
A 50th anniversary performance was given by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons at Coventry Cathedral on 30 May 2012. [27]
As part of Lincolnshire Remembers commemoration of the centenary of the end of the First World War, Lincoln Cathedral hosted a performance of Britten's War Requiem. On Saturday 3 November 2018, singers from Lincoln Choral Society, Gainsborough Choral Society, Scunthorpe Choral Society, Grimsby Philharmonic Society, Louth Choral Society, Neustadt Liedertafel, and the Choristers of Lincoln Cathedral were joined by the Lincolnshire Chamber Orchestra. The soloists were Rachel Nicholls (soprano), Alessandro Fisher (tenor) and Julien Van Mallaerts (baritone). The organist was Jeffrey Makinson, and the pianist was Jonathon Gooing. The conductors were Mark Wilde, Susan Hollingworth and Aric Prentice. [28]
War Requiem | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Studio album by | ||||
Released | 1963 | |||
Recorded | 1963 | |||
Genre | Classical | |||
Length | 1:31:24 | |||
Label | Decca Records | |||
Producer | John Culshaw | |||
Benjamin Britten chronology | ||||
|
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [29] |
The first recording, featuring Vishnevskaya, Fischer-Dieskau and Pears, with the London Symphony Orchestra and The Bach Choir conducted by Britten, was produced by Decca in 1963. Within five months of its release it sold 200,000 copies, an unheard-of number for a piece of contemporary classical music at that time. [30] Recording producer John Culshaw reports that Vishnevskaya threw a tantrum during the recording, as she believed – not having performed the work before – she was being insulted by being placed with the choir instead of at the front with the male soloists. [31] [32] The newest (2013) CD reissue of this recording includes 50 minutes of surreptitiously taped rehearsal footage at the time of the recording.
Other recordings [33] of the work include the following:
In 1988, Derek Jarman made a screen adaptation of War Requiem of the same title, with the 1963 recording as the soundtrack, produced by Don Boyd and financed by the BBC. It includes the final film performance of Laurence Olivier, in the role of an ageing war veteran.
The Messa da Requiem is a musical setting of the Catholic funeral mass (Requiem) for four soloists, double choir and orchestra by Giuseppe Verdi. It was composed in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, whom Verdi admired, and therefore also referred to as the Manzoni Requiem. The first performance, at the San Marco church in Milan on 22 May 1874, conducted by the composer, marked the first anniversary of Manzoni's death. It was followed three days later by the same performers at La Scala. Verdi conducted his work at major venues in Europe.
Heather Mary Harper was a Northern Irish operatic soprano. She was active internationally in both opera and concert. She performed roles such as Helena in Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Opera House, Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival, and the Countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera. She became known internationally when she stepped in for the world premiere of Britten's War Requiem in 1962, and remained associated with the composer's work, but also sang other premieres.
Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. The choral-orchestral setting of the shortened Catholic Mass for the Dead in Latin is the best-known of his large works. Its focus is on eternal rest and consolation. Fauré's reasons for composing the work are unclear, but do not appear to have had anything to do with the death of his parents in the mid-1880s. He composed the work in the late 1880s and revised it in the 1890s, finishing it in 1900.
Patrick Hawes is a British composer, conductor, organist and pianist.
Spring Symphony is a choral symphony by Benjamin Britten, his Opus 44. The work is scored for soprano, alto and tenor soloists, mixed choir, boys' choir and orchestra. Britten used texts of several poems related to spring, mostly from the 16th and 17th centuries and also one by W. H. Auden. Britten dedicated the work to Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The work received its premiere in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam on 14 July 1949 as part of the Holland Festival
Polish Requiem, also A Polish Requiem, is a large-scale requiem mass for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. The Lacrimosa, dedicated to the trade union leader Lech Wałęsa, was written for the unveiling of a statue at the Gdańsk Shipyard to commemorate those killed in the Polish anti-government riots in 1970. He expanded the work into a requiem, writing other parts to honour different patriotic events over the next four years.
Missa Latina is a classical music composition written by the Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra. The work was written for SATB chorus with two soloists, and a symphonic orchestra. It was co-commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and The Choral Arts Society of Washington and was written through 2003–2005. It premiered in 2006 at Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and was also performed in the 51st Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. The Washington Times judged it "the most significant symphonic premiere in the District since the late Benjamin Britten's stunning War Requiem was first performed in the still-unfinished Washington National Cathedral in the late 1960s."
Antonín Dvořák's Requiem in B♭ minor, Op. 89, B. 165, is a funeral Mass scored for soloists, choir and orchestra. It was composed in 1890 and performed for the first time on 9 October 1891, in Birmingham, England, with the composer conducting.
Albert Meredith Davies CBE was a British conductor, renowned for his advocacy of English music by composers such as Benjamin Britten, Frederick Delius and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
James Westman is a Canadian baritone known for his interpretation of the Verdi, Puccini and bel canto operatic repertoire, and particularly his signature role of Germont in La traviata, which he has sung in over 150 performances, with opera companies such as San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Graz Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Opéra de Montréal, Los Angeles Opera, Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Canadian Opera Company, Boston Lyric Opera, Cologne Opera, Vancouver Opera, English National Opera, San Diego Opera, Dallas Opera, Utah Opera, and Opera Theatre of St. Louis. On January 29, 2011 Westman created the lead role of Sandy Keith In the world premiere of Bramwell Tovey's The Inventor. In 2017 he played Sir John A. MacDonald in Harry Somers's Louis Riel for the Canadian Opera Company's tribute to Canada's 150th celebrations. As a recitalist, he has performed for the Marilyn Horne Foundation, Aldeburgh Connection, Aldeburgh Festival, Musikverein, Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Morgan Library & Museum, Koerner Hall, Carnegie Hall, Saito Kinen Festival in Japan, Stratford Summer Music, British Broadcasting Corporation, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Westman first came to attention at the age of twelve when he was the first boy soprano to perform and record Mahler 4th Symphony with Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in 1984. Westman is regularly featured as the Anthem singer for the Toronto Maple Leafs and numerous other NHL franchises. Four of Westman's recordings have been nominated for a Juno Award. Two recordings nominated for a Grammy Award.
The Dessoff Choirs is an independent chorus based in New York City. Margarete Dessoff established the organization in 1930 as the union of two choirs she directed, the Adesdi chorus and the A Cappella Singers, whence the plural Choirs. Today, the plural connotes Dessoff's various ensembles, which range from the large Dessoff Symphonic Choir, which appears with major orchestras, to the Dessoff Chamber Choir, which performs in more intimate settings.
Gavin Carr is a British conductor and baritone working with major choruses in the UK and appearing in opera and concert in the UK and around the globe.
Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams OBE is a British baritone and composer.
Charlotte Bray is a British composer. She was championed by the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London Sinfonietta and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been performed by many notable conductors such as: Sir Mark Elder, Oliver Knussen, Daniel Harding, and Jac van Steen.
Britten's War Requiem (1963) is the first recording of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. It featured Galina Vishnevskaya, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Peter Pears with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Melos Ensemble, The Bach Choir and the Highgate School Choir, and was conducted by Britten himself. The recording took place in the Kingsway Hall in London and was produced by John Culshaw for Decca. Within five months of its release in May 1963 it sold 200,000 copies, an unheard-of number for a piece of contemporary classical music at that time.
Joseph Phibbs is an English composer of orchestral, choral and chamber music. He has also composed for theatre, both in the UK and Japan. Since 1998 he has written regularly to commissions for Festivals, for private sponsors, and for the BBC, which has broadcast premieres of his orchestral and chamber works from the Proms and elsewhere. His works have been given premieres in Europe, the United States and the Far East, and he has received prestigious awards, including most recently a British Composer Award, and a Library of Congress Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation Award. Many of his works have been premiered by leading international musicians, including Dame Evelyn Glennie, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, Sakari Oramo, Vasily Petrenko, Gianandrea Noseda, and the Belcea Quartet.
The Messa da requiem in D minor (1835) is a musical setting of the Catholic funeral mass (Requiem) by Italian opera composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is scored for five soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra. A performance lasts about 62–75 minutes.
Requiem is a setting of the Latin Mass for the dead for four soloists, mixed choir, orchestra and organ by Frank Martin. Composed in 1971 and 1972, it was premiered at Lausanne Cathedral on 4 May 1973, with the composer conducting the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. It has been described as the composer's masterpiece.