May 2022 marks the sixtieth anniversary of War Requiem, ‘Perhaps the most important work I have yet written’ as Britten described it in his correspondence...

It was composed especially as part of the celebrations for the consecration of the new cathedral at Coventry. The former cathedral had been almost completely destroyed by bombing in November 1940. Britten focussed his Requiem on the theme of war, the very reason behind the cathedral’s rebuilding. His score proclaims this theme from the beginning with lines by the poet Wilfred Owen, which he included as a preface on the title page:

‘My subject is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity.

All a poet can do today is warn.’

Britten wanted Owen’s poetry to act as a ‘commentary’ on the Mass for the Dead and it is sung throughout by the tenor and baritone soloists. The work of a ‘great English poet’ was how Britten described Owen’s verse to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in a letter of February 1961 as he cautiously and earnestly invited him to participate in the first performance. It was the composer’s intention that the three soloists in the work, a soprano, tenor and baritone should represent the three nations – Russia, the UK and Germany – who suffered some of the greatest losses during World War Two. To Britten’s relief, Fischer-Dieskau was able to accept. Due to political tensions at the time, however, Galina Vishnevskaya was prevented by the Soviet Ministry of Culture from taking part. As a result, the soprano solo was sung by Heather Harper who was asked to come in at short notice to replace her.

Main image: Tilda Swinton in Derek Jarman's film adaptation of War Requiem, 1989

Part of Britten’s preparation for War Requiem involved his writing out of the full text into the unused pages of a German exercise book that he had kept since his student days at Gresham’s School. The Mass is written in pencil on the left while on the opposite page Owen’s verse (selected from a book of his collected works, edited by Edmund Blunden) is copied out in blue ink.

This shows us Britten’s method of setting words, of ensuring the text was as he needed it before he embarked on composition. When writing an opera he worked closely with his librettist, often implementing changes or rewording passages. The task posed a different type of challenge when Britten set much older texts, such as Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he and Pears adapted into an opera a year before work began on the Requiem. Large portions of the play had to be cut away and even a new line of verse had to be invented to create a workable libretto. There was occasion in War Requiem where Britten also felt he needed to alter certain passages of text. A case in point is his setting of Owen’s Strange Meeting, which is sung in reply to the Libera Me. In this instance the composer omitted specific lines and at one point he made the extraordinary decision to insert an excerpt from a previous draft of the poem, the content of which is included in the notes in Blunden’s edition.

Strange Meeting is a conversation between two dead soldiers from opposing forces, one of whom talks of trying to cleanse the blood of men who have fallen on the battlefield:

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed my friend.

In his recasting of the text Britten selects two lines from the earlier draft that stress Owen’s evocation of ‘sweet wells:’

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells

Even from wells we sunk too deep for war,

Even the sweetest wells that ever were.

I am the enemy you killed my friend.

The inclusion of Owen’s work in the Requiem made an extraordinary impact on those who attended the first performance, as correspondence to Britten reveals. In a letter of June 1962, for example, Britten and Pears’ friend the artist Reynolds Stone noted how effectively the ancient and modern texts worked together, each giving new insight into the ‘ghastly meaning’ of war; how they were in their own way both ‘new’ and ‘timeless’. He also comments on how ‘incredibly moving’ and ‘well matched’ were Pears’ and Fischer-Dieskau’s voices. And he emphasises how the art and music of the new cathedral – decrying war and celebrating renewal – gripped the audience ‘from the first moment onwards.’

Owen’s poetry has a unique place in another response to War Requiem. In April 1963 Owen’s brother Harold wrote a letter of appreciation to Britten for his ‘superbly beautiful Requiem’. Harold included with his letter a significant gift, a draft in Wilfred’s hand of the Anthem for Doomed Youth (originally entitled Anthem forDead Youth, as the manuscript reveals), which is sung during the Requiem Aeternum. In Harold’s words, the manuscript showed that Wilfred ‘wrote many drafts before he attained what he wanted to say. I know that Wilfred never laboured over his poems but he did – in the true sense – work very hard on everything he wrote.’

The draft was not counted among the known draft manuscripts of the poem kept in the British Library and as such remained uncatalogued by the Owen scholar Jon Stallworthy. Such a gift would doubtless have touched Britten profoundly.

War Requiem was first performed on the 30 May and 1 June 1962 during the Coventry Cathedral Festival. All the materials that went into the making of Britten’s masterpiece and the responses to its earliest performances attest to the enduring importance of its message.

Further reading: Philip Reed, ‘The War Requiem in Progress,’ in Mervyn Cooke, Britten: War Requiem. Cambridge Music Handbooks. Cambridge, CUP, 1996.