Saturday, November 23, 2024

War Requiem


On Sunday, November 10, Red Baron listened to Benjamin Britton's War Requiem at the Konzerthaus Freiburg.

Freiburg in ruins (©Stadtarchiv Freiburg)
It was a commemorative concert on the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Freiburg. On November 27, 1944, between 7:55 p.m. and 8:18 p.m., the Royal Air Force flew Operation Tigerfish and raided the city, catching the citizens almost unprepared, especially since the alert had only been given shortly before.

The death toll was 2797; in total, around 30% of all homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill walks with the Mayor of Coventry and a
Church of England clergy member through the ruined nave of Coventry Cathedral (Wikipedia).
The German Luftwaffe (Air Force) bombed Coventry on November 14, 1940, leaving 600 dead and more than 400 houses destroyed. The raid had the cynic codename Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata).

The world premiere of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem took place in 1962 to celebrate the reopening of Coventry Cathedral, which had been almost entirely destroyed and rebuilt (in a modern way).

The English poet Wilfred Owen wrote at the age of twenty-five in the spring of 1918 before he fell on the Western Front on November 4,

"My subject is War and the pity of War. 
The Poetry is in the pity ...
All a poet can do today is warn."

These lines serve as a preface to Britten's War Requiem, which combines the Latin text of the Missa pro Defunctis with texts of Wilfred Owen's war poems. The oratorio-like composition unfolds in three musical forces that alternate and interact with each other.

For the Freiburg performance, the large Freiburg University of Music Orchestra, an enlarged choir—the University of Music Choir and the Freiburg Bach Choir merged—and a solo soprano (Maria Bengtsson) were on stage in the concert hall. They played and sang in the oratorio style with Latin texts.

The Freiburg Cathedral Boys' Choir, divided into two parts and seated on the right-hand side gallery of the concert hall, sang, accompanied by the organ, the hopeful aspects of the requiem mass in the Introitus, Offertium, and "Libera me."

The third layer consists of the setting of Wilfried Owen's war poems, sung by a British and a German soldier* accompanied by a chamber orchestra.
*David Fischer, tenor, and Markus Eiche, baritone

More than 250 actors performed during the evening, making it challenging for conductor Frank Markowitsch to bring the three ensembles together.

The Requiem begins with a dissonance. The comforting tolling of the death knell and the Requiem aeterna donna eis, Domine, Et lux perpetua luceat eis* are answered by the soldier:
*Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, And let perpetual light shine upon them.

"What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns,
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning, save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires."

Owen's protest against the war and its cruelties culminates in the scene in which, in contrast to the Old Testament, Abraham slaughters his son Isaac. 

"Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builder parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son."

"When lol an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not the hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in the 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 male soloists recount a conversation between two soldiers who have died on the same day ("Strange Meeting"). One of them laments,

"I knew you in this dark, for so you frowned
Yesterday, through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried, but my hands were loath and cold."

The two end in a common, "Let us sleep now."

In the end, the three musical groups fully combine while the boys' choirs, chorus, and soprano respond with the well-known In paradisum deducant te Angeli and Resquiescant in pace*.
*May angels lead you to paradise and rest in peace

Britten built his War Requiem upon the interval of the tritone "C-Fis," labeled as "the devil in music" during the Middle Ages for its dissonance. This interval opens the work and is sounded again at the very end before a final F-major chord brightens the Amen. This was unusual for the listener but comforting.

The visibly moved audience paused for a minute in silence, but then frenetic applause broke loose.

Conductor Frank Markowitsch and the ensemble applaud the Cathedral Boys' Choir.
The Cathedral Boys' Choir is sitting high in the gallery on the right side.
The three solo singers with their flowers.
*

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