A Musical Transformation: Wilfred Owen to Benjamin Britten
The performance which took place in the Cathedral of Saint Michael at Coventry on 30th May 1962 constituted, in English poetry and English music, a remarkable occasion. Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976) composed War Requiem for the consecration of the new cathedral which took the place of St David's, destroyed in an air raid in 1940. Juxtaposing the traditional Latin prayers with the poems of the Welsh poet Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918) enabled Britten to draw into question the status of the Christian Mass of the Dead and to mourn those of his friends whom he had lost in World War II. War Requiem's very title identifies its complex nature: it is at once a Requiem refashioned by a literature of war and a literature of war seen anew through a Christian liturgy, a dual transformation. Wilfred Owen, now one of the most renowned poets of World War I, was killed in battle a week short of the Armistice. His work constitutes a body of poetry protesting against the iniquities of war, primarily written in what was for Owen the annus mirabilis of 1917 when he was being treated for shell-shock at Craiglockhart War Hospital. Through the voice of experience, Owen's poetry "tersely and disturbingly stripped war of any sense
A formal register calls into question the public glorification of "titanic wars" which result only in trauma, death and grief. Comprising two sets of five iambic tetrameters bracketed by trimeters, the truncated sonnet structure of the poem creates the sense of the incomplete, the opening and closing lines of each septet left "unsown. They boast that they have unflinchingly greeted their foreboding comrade "while he shaved us with his scythe. The Owen word setting features as the tenor solo, and the choir softly sings the Latin refrain, "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem. "Anthem For Doomed Youth" is the opening poem in War Requiem. Michael's Cathedral, for whose consecration the work was realised. " His poetry is imbued with vivid sound devices and aural patterns which brutally alert one's ears to the dissonance of war. While the tenor once again adopts the role of soldier-narrator, the solo soprano assumes the character of a woman unable to share the experiences of the man, but united with him through her grief. Britten's approach to capturing "the pity of war" and "the pity war distilled" can be likened to the architectural construction of St. Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) composed his Requiem from a less conventional approach, dispensing with the traditional Latin text and opting, instead, to select and compile fragmented German texts from his own Lutheran tradition. "Anthem for Doomed Youth" introduces listeners to the tenor soloist and the chamber ensemble that accompanies him, performers who recreate the sounds of battle. Owen's poetry interacts in a markedly discordant way with the Latin text. It is these chilling sounds, and thus the soldiers' experience, which Britten replicates musically throughout the work. IV ConclusionThe departure from literary tradition in Owen's poetry undoubtedly played a role in influencing Britten's choice of the poet's work.
Common topics in this essay:
Doomed Youth,
Strange Meeting,
War Describing,
War Requiem,
Britten Owen's,
Dies Irae,
Agnus Dei,
Day Wrath,
Isaac God,
Benjamin Britten,
war requiem,
doomed youth,
anthem doomed,
anthem doomed youth,
dies irae,
owen's poetry,
strange meeting,
musical setting,
latin text,
agnus dei,
war requiem's,
calvary near ancre,
english latin texts,
britten's musical setting,
demented choirs wailing,
|
Acceptance Essays
