An act of reconciliation and a warning against war

«My subject is War, and the pity of War,
 The Poetry is in the pity …
 All a poet can do today is warn.»¹

Wilfred Owen

In times of war, the “War Requiem”, an oratorio for vocal soloists, choir and orchestra by the British composer Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), is particularly topical. It is one of the most important choral works of the 20th century and was premiered on 30 May 1962 for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in England, conducted by the composer. The church had been reduced to rubble by the German Luftwaffe in November 1940; only the tower and part of the outer walls remained standing. The new building was added to the ruins – an impressive memorial.2 As a sign of reconciliation, Britten recruited the English tenor Peter Pears and the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau for the premiere; the Russian soprano Galina Pavlona Vishnevskaya was not given permission to leave the country by the Soviet government and was replaced by a singer from Northern Ireland.

Benjamin Britten –
composer, pianist, conductor

Benjamin Britten received piano lessons from his mother at the age of five. He wrote his first compositions at the age of eight. In the 1930s, he studied piano and composition at the Royal College of Music in London. In 1937, he met the opera singer and later partner Peter Pears, for whom and with whom he wrote numerous works, above all art songs and title roles for his operas, which they performed for decades in the world’s great concert halls. In 1939, the declared pacifist and conscientious objector went to the USA with Pears
  After his return, he was recognised as a conscientious objector in the second instance. Together with violinist Yehudi Menuhin, he gave concerts in camps set up by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union for so-called displaced persons (traumatised adults, young people and children). In 1954, he was one of the supporters of the newly founded anti-colonialist Movement for Colonial Freedom. Following the motto “Keeping the cultural door open”, he formed a close artistic friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich during the Cold War. Because of his socially critical commitment, he was repeatedly monitored by the British secret service.
  Britten’s extensive oeuvre includes orchestral works, choral works, operas, solo vocal music, chamber music and cantatas, while numerous compositions are of a sacred nature. He received many awards at home and abroad for his work. He is also very successful as a pianist and conductor.

The ‘War Requiem’: The music ...

Numerous composers have set the requiem, the requiem mass for the deceased, to music, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, Anton Bruckner, Gabriel Fauré and representatives of 20^th century New Music such as Igor Stravinsky and György Ligeti. The “War Requiem” is a special requiem, dedicated by the composer to four friends who died in the war: It mourns the millions of dead from the two world wars and therefore requires special forms of music and text.
  Britten, an uncompromising pacifist, composed the one-and-a-half-hour work as an expression of great grief, yes distress, at the monstrosity of both world wars. The elaborate scoring: soprano, tenor and baritone voices, mixed choir and cappella choir, organ, bells, large orchestra and chamber orchestra. The music has nothing comforting or operatic about it and no catchy melodies as in a traditional requiem, but sounds monotonous, dissonant and recreates the sounds of war for long stretches.
  The traditional Latin text of the requiem mass, performed by a mixed choir and solo soprano, and nine anti-war poems by the poet and soldier Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), sung by baritone and tenor, are juxtaposed, which can only be presented here by way of example. Owen is the most important contemporary First World War witness in English literature who does not shy away from drastically depicting the horrors and absurdity of war. Misled by propaganda like countless other young men, he had joined up with the expectation of experiencing adventure and soon returning home victorious. Like all young soldiers, the cruel reality of modern war caught him completely unprepared; he fell a few days before the armistice in France was signed.

… and the texts

The classical form of the Requiem begins with the words:

“Lord, grant them eternal rest;
 and let the perpetual light shine apon them. […]
 Thou shalt have praise in Zion, of God:”

Two male voices (tenor, baritone), embodying soldiers from two enemies in a war, then intonate a poem by Owen, which - like the other poems – counteracts the traditional text:

“What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
 Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
 Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle.
 Can patter out their hasty orisons
 No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
 Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
 The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; […]”

And at another point the duo sings:

“Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death:
 Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,
 […] We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,
 Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe.
 He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed
 Shrapnel. We chorused when he sang aloft;
 We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe”.

The two voices also intonate the Old Testament parable of Abraham, whose obedience God tests by demanding that he sacrifice his only son. Abraham wants to obey immediately – but at the last moment, an angel asks him not to lay a hand on his own son. Abraham is then given eleven more sons. Owen radically changes the ending: after the angel’s request to sacrifice a ram and not his own son, it says:

“But the old man would not so,
 but slew his son,
 And half the seed of Europe, one by one..”

Abraham becomes the representative of the politicians who cannot overcome their pride so as to put an end to the war, but sacrifice all their soldiers without scruples.
  At the end, Owen emphasises once again that nothing but final death awaits the soldiers.
  Tenor:

“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.
 I parried; but my hands were loath and cold”.

The duet sings in conclusion:

“Let us sleep now …”

The boys’ choir, together with chorus and soprano conclude the Requiem traditionally:

“Into Paradise may the Angels lead thee:
 at thy coming may the Martyrs receive thee, […]”

At Britten’s request, no one applauded during and after the premiere in Coventry Cathedral. Instead, everybody was affected and silent. This Requiem does not promise paradisiacal conditions, but warns of the consequences of unresolved conflicts; it is a memorial against all wars and an appeal for peace.

Instrumentalisation of art

In view of the current world situation and the many conflicts that are being fought out with armed force, it makes sense to perform this work. The concerts of the SWR Symphonieorchester under the direction of Teodor Currentzis (*1972) caused quite a stir, as the year drew to a close. Born in Greece and with Russian citizenship, he was chief conductor at the opera in Novosibirsk and founded the MusicaAeterna ensemble there in 2004. This focuses particularly on music from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, is now based in St. Petersburg and is one of the most sought-after ensembles. It interprets well-known works from the classical repertoire in a way that has never been heard before, to great acclaim from audiences, performers and experts alike. MusicaAeterna is supported by the sanctioned Russian VTB Bank; the most recently founded ensemble “Utopia”, consisting of 128 members from all over the world, can count on Western donors.
  Neither the management of the Salzburg Festival nor that of the SWR Symphony Orchestra demanded that Currentzis distance himself from Russia’s politics or condemn the war in Ukraine during this year’s performances of the Requiem. In Stuttgart, however, it was emphasised that of course one condemned Russia’s war of aggression. The Cologne Philharmonic unceremoniously disinvited the orchestra, citing Russian sponsors. And under pressure from Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv and the musicians of the Kiev Symphony Orchestra, the management of the Vienna Festival withdrew the performance of the War Requiem from their programme: these could not imagine performing alongside Currentzis and the SWR Symphony Orchestra as if nothing were wrong … an unparalleled affront to which the management bowed.³ One year after the start of the war in Ukraine, commemorative events had been held in various places, with their programmes including the playing of the Ukrainian national anthem, just as if this war were the only one currently being fought … Many media outlets regularly take the same line by keeping up the pressure. The newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, for example, asks: “How loud can you keep quiet about Russia?” Or demands are made, for example, that Currentzis should finally reveal his relationship with Vladimir Putin, his attitude to the war in Ukraine and “his unclear connections with Russia”, the latter referring above all to the sponsorship on which every orchestra depends.
  This is certainly not the first time that art has been instrumentalised for propagandistic political purposes and thus misused. Currentzis and his orchestras do not allow themselves to be exploited; they do what they do best and what is expected of musicians: they speak through their music; experts and audiences continue to thank them for it. •

¹ Britten placed these words by the British poet and soldier Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) at the top of the musical score. “My theme is war and the suffering of war. The poetry is in the suffering … All a poet can do today is warn.”
² The same concept was realised for the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, which was bombed in retaliation by the British Air Force in 1943, as well as for the main church of St. Nikolai in Hamburg, which fell victim to the air battle for Hamburg in 1943, known as “Operation Gomorrah”.
³ The Kiev orchestra performed the Kaddish Requiem “Babyn Yar” by the contemporary Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych (*1942), which deals with a massacre of 30,000 Ukrainian Jews by National Socialist soldiers (1941).

Further sources:

Abels, Norbert. Benjamin Britten, (Rowohlt Monografien), Reinbek 2008
“Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’: Poignant, then and now”, https://www.ndr.de/kultur/musik/klassik/Brittens-War-Requiem-Ergreifend-damals-wie-heute-,warrequiem566.html
“After six years with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, standing ovations as a token of farewell: Currentzis conducts Britten’s ‘War Requiem’”,  https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/musik-klassik/bewegender-abschied-currentzis-dirigiert-brittens-war-requiem-100.html
Official website of Coventry Cathedral, https://www.coventrycathedral.org.uk
Programme booklet of the performance by the SWR Symphonieorchester under Teodor Currentzis at the Konzerthaus Freiburg and the Liederhalle Stuttgart on June 2024, https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/index.html
Programme booklet of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg from June 2024, https://www.elbphilharmonie.de/de/programm/britten-war-requiem-teodor-currentzis/20224