Remembering
When I started my daily music posts I mentioned that it was partly inspired by a radio programme. I well remember on a Saturday afternoon walking from home to Ibrox stadium to watch the football - my transistor radio (yep it was that long ago) held to my ear listening to that programme.
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One piece of music that I was introduced to during those walks was Benjamin Britten's War Requiem - first performed at the re-opening of Coventry Cathedral after it was destroyed during WWII.
This is not in the same vein as my usual Friday calming music - at times this music is uncomfortable - with its juxtaposition of the latin words of the requiem mass with the poems of the WWI poet, Wilfred Owens.
It is the closing movement - the Libera Me - that I remember from that radio broadcast. The music had an effect on me at first hearing and it is just as moving each time you listen. After an opening which is far from soothing, the two male soloists take us to the ending of the requiem where the huge forces of the orchestras, choirs, soloists are all combined for the first time in the whole work - not in a rousing finale - but in a beautiful coda.
Benjamin Britten was a pacifist and this is not a glorification of war - rather it is a portrait of the horrors and futility of it all - one of the comments below the video includes this :
No music I have sung, before and after, has more emotionally affected me than this 'War Requiem'. And it won't go away, too. Every time I hear the 'Dies Irae' or particularly the 'Libera Me', it strikes me as dramatically as it did the first time around. This 'Requiem's construction, interweaving 'War Poets' poetry with the age-old Latin mass, is not only original, but it works. The choir is a 'choros' in the Greek tragedy way, and evene becomes a character in the tragedy of war, especially in the 'Libera Me' part where 'the people' are irrevocably devastated under the huge, ruthless feet of the War Machine, as foreseen and lamented by the tragic soprano ("tremens factus sum ego"). The pacifist nature of the catharsis, by two dead soldiers, once enemies, meeting up in heaven or at least limbo, is another stroke of genius. Britten's 'Requiem' is not a just presentation of War, but a presentation of Humanity in the face of War. It is at the end where we all connect, whatever country you are from. The two-minute ending is befitting the 'humanly religious' nature of the piece.
The link I have given is (hopefully) to the start of the Libera Me - although if you can spare the time the whole of the Requiem is in this video. This is the original recording conducted by Britten himself - the two male soloists are British and German - Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Diskau- and the soprano is Russian - Galina Vishnevskaya - emphasising the no-borders message of the music - everyone is affected by war.
A fitting piece of music for today - VE Day.
