War Requiem

In 1958, Britten received a commission to mark the 1962 reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral, rebuilt after its destruction in the Second World War. This rekindled an idea Britten had had 10 years earlier: writing a requiem in memory of Mahatma Gandhi, assassinated in 1948. Britten had conceived setting the traditional Latin requiem mass interspersed with texts pertinent to Gandhi’s life and work. The idea was abandoned in favour of composing the opera Billy Budd. Now, the Coventry commission inspired him to create his most public anti-war statement, the Cathedral setting obviously ideal for his concept of juxtaposing the requiem with pertinent texts: Britten artfully chose poems from the First World War by Wilfred Owen to comment upon and often angrily confront the liturgical Mass. To highlight the work’s ultimate message of reconciliation, Britten assigned the solo parts to a Russian soprano (Galina Vishnevskaya), an English tenor (Peter Pears) and a German baritone (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau). While Owen’s texts are sung by the male soloists accompanied by a chamber orchestra, the Mass text is divided between a main chorus with the soprano soloist and orchestra (at times deliberately echoing Verdi’s famous Requiem), and an off-stage boys’ choir accompanied by chamber organ. The treble voices represent a humanity of unsullied innocence, yet lively and vigorous like the Westminster Cathedral choristers who had inspired Britten’s recent Missa Brevis (1959).