PROGRAM NOTES
for concerts on March 3 & 4, 2012

BENJAMIN BRITTEN
(1913-1976)
War Requiem, Op. 66

This weekend’s performances of Benjamin Britten’s monumental War Requiem are part of an international celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of this extraordinary and transcendent work of 20th-century choral and orchestral art. Under the leadership of music director Mark Russell Smith, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra has collaborated with solo, choral, and instrumental forces from the Augustana College community, the University of Minnesota community, Macalester College, and Detmold, Germany to present five performances of Britten’s masterpiece. These assembled musicians have already presented three performances of the War Requiem in Germany and in Minneapolis, and they now conclude this celebration and commemoration of peace amidst conflict with this weekend’s performances in the Quad Cities.

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On the night of November 14, 1940, St. Michael’s Cathedral, the seat of the Diocese of the city of Coventry, England, was fire-bombed by aircraft from Nazi Germany. The raid was part of the "Blitz” bombing campaign undertaken by Adolf Hitler to demoralize England into surrendering. Following the defeat of Hitler and the end of the war, plans to rebuild the cathedral were approved. The new, modern structure gradually emerged from the ground next to the fire-bombed ruins of the original cathedral. On May 25, 1962, the new Coventry Cathedral was consecrated, an event marked five days later by the first performance in the cathedral of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, composed to mark the consecration.

These dry statements inadequately describe the significance of that performance; for Britten, an Englishman, the evening was the culmination of years of philosophical unease with war, which had prompted his own conscientious objection to service in England’s military forces during World War Two. For the world at large, the performance was a solemn occasion marking the rebirth of a hallowed building; but at the same time it was also an occasion that commemorated death, and in particular, the deaths of young men due to warfare.

The Requiem Mass is the Catholic Church’s liturgical service that both commemorates the dead and comforts the living. The Requiem’s Latin text has been set to music by many composers over the ages, with notable large-scale examples coming from Mozart, Berlioz, Dvořák, and Verdi. In no instance, though, did any of these composers interpolate other texts into the Requiem’s venerated Latin words. That task fell to Britten, as he combined the original ancient words with the poetry of Wilfred Owen, a young English soldier-poet killed in World War One just a week before the armistice in 1918. Owen’s poems, published posthumously, are strong and harsh. In his own words, "My subject is War and the pity of War.” To Britten, Owen’s modern poems stood beside the Latin words, commenting on and even contradicting the assumptions and convictions contained in the ancient verses. Britten constantly drew parallels between the two text sources and showed their conflicts. Not until the War Requiem’s final moments do the concerns of both join and become one; Owen’s suggestion of eternal peace fuses with the Requiem’s prayer for eternal rest.

Britten divided the large performing forces required for the War Requiem into three separate groups. The major portion of the Requiem text is sung by the chorus and soprano soloist, supported by the full orchestra. Tenor and baritone soloists, representing two soldiers from opposing sides, sing Wilfred Owen’s words to the accompaniment of a chamber orchestra. Their music is more angular than the choral music, thereby emphasizing the horror and confusion in Owen’s poetry. A third group of performers is the boys’ choir, accompanied by organ and placed at a distance from the other choral forces. They sing a portion of the Latin text, and as children, are an ever-present reminder of who must fight the next generation’s wars. The War Requiem unfolds in six large movements that match the divisions of the Requiem’s Latin text.

I. REQUIEM AETERNAM

The work begins without introduction; tolling bells accompany the chorus’s opening statements of "Requiem aeternam” as Britten presents the work’s principal musical materials. The unusual and musically uneasy interval known as the "tritone” (for example, C to F#) permeates everything from the chiming bell notes to the orchestra’s music. The chants of the boys’ choir intermingle with statements from the chorus. Suddenly the music changes mood, becoming more disjunct as the tenor soloist begins Owen’s poem "What passing bells for these who die as cattle?” The chorus, whose melodic lines are uncomfortably stretched across the tritone interval, intones the "Kyrie eleison” text accompanied only by a chiming bell. At the last possible moment the tension resolves into a major chord.

II. DIES IRAE

A long history of word painting surrounds composers’ settings of these few but frightening words from the Book of Revelation. The text describes the Day of Wrath and the terrors of the Last Judgement that await sinners who tremble as they stand to be judged. But Britten only briefly touches the expected orchestral trumpeting and rumbling, and instead, compares the horrors of Judgement Day to the horrors of trench warfare. Avoiding the cataclysmic bombast of earlier composers, he chooses to emphasize the sad despondency of the baritone soloist’s lines. 

The soprano soloist and chorus announce the arrival of the fearful Judge, but the tenor and baritone, as two soldiers, display false courage as they swagger and sing of their comradeship with Death.

A women’s chorus singing the "Recordare” text pleads for mercy and redemption. A men’s chorus answers with the "Confutatis” text, before the baritone soloist returns to describe an arrogantly-aimed artillery gun pointed at heaven.

The chorus suddenly interrupts with a return of the "Dies irae” music, then gives way to the soprano, who intones the "Lacrimosa,” marked by its two-note, sighing, weeping, musical figures. Her lament leads to the tenor, who futilely hopes for the revival of a dead comrade. The movement ends quietly once again, the chorus accompanied only by tolling bells.

III. OFFERTORIUM

The boys’ choir begins a prayer for the safety of the souls of the dead. The chorus enters singing a somewhat disjunct fugue that reminds God of his promise to "Abraham and his seed.” The baritone and tenor narrate Owen’s version of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, except this time Abraham refuses to substitute a sacrificial ram in place of his son and slays the boy "and half the seed of Europe, one by one.” The biblical tale has thus been turned upside down. The choral fugue returns, this time also upside down, its musical theme an inversion of its original form; the movement fades away.

IV. SANCTUS

"Holy, holy, holy” and "Hosannas” ring the air as Britten briefly permits an outburst of confidence from the chorus. The soprano recites the "Benedictus” blessing before the chorus again exultantly shouts. 

But from this peak of joy and exuberance, Britten plunges the mood into the depths of gloom. The baritone sings Owen’s dirge of despair in which he seeks assurance of an afterlife. But none is forthcoming.

V. AGNUS DEI

This movement, the shortest at just four minutes long, begins with an Owen poem. The tenor describes a roadside crucifix damaged in the fighting, and of "the priests and scribes” who aid and encourage war-making. Between each of the verses, the chorus intones the "Agnus dei” text ("Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world, give them rest”).

VI. LIBERA ME

Agony and terror have returned. The orchestra plays a slow march as the chorus asks for deliverance, finally breaking into a panic as the frightening music of the "Dies irae” returns. Gradually the tumult subsides and the tenor and baritone sing Owen’s "Strange Meeting,” the poem that is for Britten the crux of the entire War Requiem. The two former enemies unite in anticipation of their long sleep as the boys’ choir quietly sings and the chorus and soprano speak of eternal peace. With the words, "May they rest in peace, Amen,” the unaccompanied chorus and tolling bells close the work, ultimately resolving the conflict into the quiet comfort and solace of a disembodied major chord.

Program notes by Dennis Loftin