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Underground > Radio & Music >

The war requiem

10:57 / 27.12.06

apparently this work was big in the sixties. started listening to it a few months ago. sometimes little bits of ittouch me when i'm going to sleep. The juxtaposition of the duettists' performance of the wilfred owen' ironic rendition of abram's sacrifice with the ethereal boys' choir in the distance praying that the wars' sacrificial lambs will be accepted is one such moment. also the terrifying culmination of the liberame. just wondering if anyone else has heard it.

14:50 / 27.12.06

This would be Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, yeah?

A remarkable piece, yeah. Much of its power—and much of the disquiet it produces—comes from Britten's conscious choice to base many of the harmonies of the work around the interval of the flatted fifth, a discord so grating that the medieval church branded it "The Devil's Interval" and forbade its use in liturgical music. Using it as the core of a deeply humanistic work structured on—almost parodying—the Catholic Mass for the dead is just the first of the piece's many ironies.

Here in the States, the public-radio program Sound And Spirit did a copuple of programs touching on Britten's War Requiem. The first (To End All War) looks at it in the tradition of music and poetry inspired by World War I, and gives some terrific context (of great value to Americans, anyway) on just why the Great War was so traumatic to generations of Europeans—how, aside from the horrendous physical cost, the war represented a philosophical upheaval.

The second (Fathers And Sons) looks at Britten (and Owen)'s interpretation of the story of the binding of Isaac, and how it lines up with other interpretations of same.

Taken together, the two shows (which you can stream online) form a very accessible point of approach to the work. And it's a massive work, with a huger-than-usual orchestra and chorus; it's hellishly demanding for orchestras, conductors, and soloists—not to mention emotionally-draining for audiences.

Frankly, I can't imagine trying to drift off to sleep listening o that. That's good old-fashioned nightmare fuel, that is.

16:51 / 27.12.06

A remarkable piece, yeah. Much of its power—and much of the disquiet it produces—comes from Britten's conscious choice to base many of the harmonies of the work around the interval of the flatted fifth, a discord so grating that the medieval church branded it "The Devil's Interval" and forbade its use in liturgical music.

Is this the same thing as the F-C tritone?

Thanks for the links. I'm pretty computer illiterate - I currently get something saying "powerdvd" coming up but don't know what to do after that. do you need a disc to listen to the programmes?

i actually was part of a choir that sang the whole thing a few months ago. the second orchestra had to be squeezed onto the stage with second conductore hunched up on a chair, and the second choir (complete with organ) were tucked up in the second tier of the auditorium. i'm convinced i was badly flat for the opening, which didn't help. the 'recordare' and 'sanctus' were real oases of calm for both audience and choir amidst the hellfire of the rest of the work.

Fellow Barb, do you know of anywhere on the web that would show derek jarman's 'till the swinton'?

21:22 / 27.12.06

The streams should play with RealPlayer.

21:28 / 27.12.06

Also: "Till the Swinton"? Are you taking the piss?

Derek Jarman did direct a film called Orlando, starring the actress Tilda Swinton. Is this what you are thinking of?

Also also: the flatted fifth is also called a tritone, yes, since it consists of three whole tones. It's the exact midpoint of the chromatic scale; the flatted fifth in a C scale would be F#, and the flatted fifth of an F# scale would be a C. There's an ambiguity of key—when you're playing a C and an F# together, which one's the tonic?—that must have been deeply unsettling to the medieval mind.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

23:23 / 27.12.06

More to the point, Jarman made The War Requiem, also featuring Ms Swinton. Though I'm still baffled by the original question.

Orlando was by Sally Potter.

12:37 / 28.12.06

erm...

My brother told me derek jarman had made a film of war footage set to the 'war requiem'. when i asked what it was called, i thought he said 'till the swinton' i think he must have thought i asked who was in it, and replied 'tilda swinton'. i'm pretty baffled myself.

12:40 / 28.12.06

My brother's good friend lost his job at hmv after failing to keep a straight face after someone asked him for a cd by 'Elephant Gerald'.

14:20 / 08.01.07

*snort* My ex-girlfriend has a cat named Orlando. When they adopted him, he'd been called Daisy all his life by previous owners who hadn't got round to checking his gender, hence the choice of name.

There's nothing like basing an entire sacred work around an interval that has been known as "diabolus in music" for subtle chutzpah, is there. I always wondered whether anyone cried blasphemy because of the rewrite of the binding of Isaac myself ("But the old man would not so, but slew his son, / and half the seed of Europe, one by one"), and come to that if Owen got into any trouble over that one.

secretgoldfish, the climax of the Libera Me is indeed the biggest I think I've ever heard, and Britten's delicate use of irony always gets me too. Sometimes the mock-chirpy bits are the eeriest of all. I don't think I could drift off to sleep to it, though.

War Requiem trivia: for the first performance they tried to get a German baritone (Fischer-Dieskau), English tenor (Pears, of course - damn it, I wish Britten could have chosen a lover whose voice I actually like) and Russian soprano (Vishnevskaya) for the soloists as a symbolic act. Unfortunately they couldn't get Vishnevskaya out of Russia, though she made it for the first recording, so they used Harper instead.

Anyone fancy a discussion of Britten's operas? Apart from adoring the music, I've always been fascinated by his treatment of ethics and sexuuality, and considering that I'm currently knee-deep in Patrick O'Brian novels i.e. the joys of life aboard a man o' war two centuries ago, I feel that a mammoth Billy Budd phase may be coming on again.