One of the great musical compositions of the twentieth century is Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, which interweaves the Latin text of the Requiem mass for the dead (sung by a large mixed chorus, children’s chorus, and soprano soloist) with the remarkable poems of Wilfred Owen (sung by the tenor and baritone soloists), a British poet who fought in World War I and was killed in action at age 25. Britten was a pacifist, but to my ear at least, the piece is not so much a political statement as it is an exhortation that we remember the reality of war: that in war, young men and women die and are injured, often in terrible ways, in large numbers. Owen was one of them. His poem about the horrors of gas warfare is particularly gut-wrenching – Britten did not set that one.
Here are three of the poems that Britten chose to set; there are more at this link and elsewhere on the web.
Futility
Move him into the sun —
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.Think how it wakes the seeds —
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, — still warm, — too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
— O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
Parable of the Old Men and the Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
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.
The End
After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot throne,
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased
And from the bronze west long retreat is blown,Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
Or fill these void veins full again with youth
And wash with an immortal water age?When I do ask white Age, he saith not so, —
“My head hangs weighed with snow.”
And when I hearken to the Earth she saith —
“My fiery heart sinks aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified
Nor my titanic tears the seas be dried.”
michael says
The Requiem is one of the great masterpieces of the last century. ‘Strange Meeting’, probably the climax of the piece, really wiped me out when I first heard it as a teenager – and still does today. Owen’s poetry should be absolutely essential reading.
The pity of war…