What happens when a composer, haunted by the futility of war, takes the ancient words of the departed and weaves them together with the poetry of a soldier on the front lines? Step inside Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, a majestic work and hopeful call for peace.

Benjamin Britten was a committed pacifist. Shaped by the shadow of the First World War, he returned from exile in the United States during the Second to find that many of his friends had been lost on the front lines.

So, when the commission came in 1962 for the consecration of Coventry Cathedral – rebuilt after the Blitz of 1940 – he saw an opportunity to say something more. By juxtaposing Latin texts of the Requiem Mass with the anti-war poetry of soldier Wilfred Owen, Britten created one of the most important 20th Century works, and his ultimate anti-war response.

On the title pages of the score he quotes Owen: «My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity… All a poet can do today is warn.»

The War Requiem: haunting and painfully human. But most of all, a hopeful call for peace. Let’s dive inside the music and behind the notes.

The War Requiem runs about an hour and a half and is nothing short of a real feat of musical architecture.

MUSICAL EXTRACT

It opens with a hush. Picture a solemn, candlelit cathedral. The boys’ choir and adult chorus intone Requiem aeternam, the traditional Latin plea for eternal rest.

But don’t get too comfortable, Britten has already planted a little musical mischief: the tritone, historically known as diabolus in musica or «the devil in music», hovers in the harmonies. That one interval will haunt us through the piece!

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Almost immediately, the tenor slips in with Wilfred Owen’s «Anthem for Doomed Youth». If the opening is a cathedral, this is the whisper in the trenches…

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Owen was a soldier in the First World War, writing about the horrors of trenches and gas warfare. Sadly, Owen was killed in action in 1918, an exact week before the Armistice, at the age of 25. He went on to become one of the great wartime poets.

His writings between the various pieces of the Latin Requiem are heartbreaking: «What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?» Soldiers are like livestock, and death has no romantic bells. Britten sets it with the chamber orchestra, sometimes evoking gunfire, rapid rhythms and bleak colours. Owen’s poetry hits like a cold wind.

Britten uses three distinct musical groups, each with its own style: The full orchestra is grand and ritualistic, the chamber orchestra with Owen’s poetry is intimate and conversational, the boys’ choir and organ are distant, ethereally innocent. This is real compositional architecture.

MUSICAL EXTRACT

Do you hear the horns? They cut through like rapid gunfire. Horns have long carried the sound of war. Long before the modern orchestra, they were used on battlefields as practical tools – signalling commands, rallying troops, or marking advances and retreats. In the War Requiem, they suggest both triumph and threat.

Now, they accent the dramatic full chorus and orchestral return with the traditional Kyrie eleison and the massive Dies irae («Day of wrath»), interspersed with Owen’s poetry like «Bugles sang» or «Futility». We are hearing an ancient Mass next to a single human voice:

«[…] dying tone Of receding voices that will not return. The wailing of the high far-travelling shells And the deep cursing of the provoking […]»

Here’s where Britten really shows off his storytelling chops. The boys’ choir whispers the liturgical lines, the adult chorus sings a choral fugue about Abraham, and then – bam – the tenor and baritone enter with Owen’s «The Parable of the Old Man and the Young». Suddenly, the story twists: Isaac dies, and the poem equates this biblical sacrifice with the slaughter of young soldiers.

This is about the sacrifice of an entire generation. So many innocent lives lost…

MUSICAL EXTRACT

In his War Requiem, Britten does something rather unusual, but very powerful.

He brings three voices from different nations onto one stage, showing us that war leaves everyone on the losing side, and that we need to overcome the borders between us.

Indeed, the oratorio was intended for Galina Vishnevskaya from the USSR (soprano), Peter Pears from the UK (tenor) and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from Germany (baritone). However, the Soviet authorities did not permit Vishnevskaya to take part in the première and the soprano role was prepared by the Irish singer Heather Harper on ten days’ notice. Can you imagine preparing this piece in just a week’s time? Unbelievable. Those three nationalities would come together to enact peace and reconciliation. In response to the Soviet «ban», Britten sent a letter to the Soviet Ministry of Culture in 1961, asking them to reconsider. The programme even went to press with Vishnevskaya’s name in it… oops! Vishnevskaya in 1974 fled the USSR together with her husband, famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

And also at the Philharmonie on 15.11. the piece will be performed by a Russian (Olga Peretyatko), English (Andrew Staples) and German (Christian Gerhaher) singer, staying true to Britten’s original idea, and a tradition that concert halls usually try to keep. A beautiful message of peace through this line-up.

MUSICAL EXTRACTS

After that, the Latin Sanctus returns, gloriously soaring, with soprano and chorus bathing the space in a sense of ritual transcendence. But Owen isn’t done. The baritone slips in with lines from The End (or thematic echoes), jolting the listener back to the war’s reality. It’s a clever dance: reverence, horror, beauty, and despair in constant motion. Just as you settle, the ground shifts again.

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Britten reminds us that behind every conflict are individual stories, interrupted lives, and voices that never got to finish what they wanted to say.

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The gentle Agnus Dei («Lamb of God») is interrupted by Owen’s At a Calvary near the Ancre. Britten intertwines Christ’s suffering with the suffering of soldiers in the trenches.

«One ever hangs where shelled roads part. In this war He too lost a limb, But His disciples hide apart; And now the Soldiers bear with Him.»

The music wraps around the poetry like a careful embrace: solemn but still alive with grief. There is a longing for peace.

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The finale ramps up again with Libera me, a traditional plea for deliverance, only to be interrupted by Owen’s «Strange Meeting» («It seemed that out of battle I escaped»). We are overwhelmed with strong dissonance, eerie percussive sounds, and belting choirs.

After over an hour of broken parts, interrupted fragments and not all elements playing at once, only here does the music finally come together. At this point, the full orchestral and vocal forces merge into a fragile, almost hesitant sense of resolution with the line: «Let us sleep now.»

MUSICAL EXTRACT

Finally, the choirs and orchestras unite in In paradisum, the Latin prayer for the soul’s journey to paradise. The tension of tritones, the jarring poetic interruptions, and the grim realities of war gently dissolve into a calm, reflective end. It’s not blissful, exactly, Britten doesn’t offer easy comfort, but it’s a moment of grace, a quiet exhale after a tumultuous journey.

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At its 1962 premiere, the piece must’ve felt strikingly current. The Berlin Wall had gone up and the Cuban Missile Crisis was looming. Audiences couldn’t help but hear echoes of nuclear anxiety in lines like «After the blast of lightning from the east.»

On the night of the premiere, a friend of Benjamin Britten’s, Reynolds Stone, wrote: «The audience was gripped from the first moment onwards. The total fusion of the ancient and modern words was such that Owen’s marvelous poetry made the Latin new and the English became timeless, like the Latin.»

Another fan listening to the BBC broadcast wrote a letter to Britten: «I felt it to be a truly magnificent work, of tremendous importance both intellectually and emotionally. The visionary quality of the balance between the finest of what is past and the understanding of the new orientation towards the future seemed to me sublime.»

Over 50 performances took place in different war-torn countries in the first 3 to 4 years of its premiere. Today, the War Requiem remains one of the few modern classics that still draws in wide audiences. Its message of peace continues to resonate.

We look forward to experiencing this masterpiece with you on 15.11. with conductor Kazuki Yamada, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Chorus Trinity Boys Choir. You can listen back to this podcast after the performance and, of course, don’t forget to pick up a free evening programme by the entrance of the Philharmonie on the day of the concert so you can dive even deeper into Britten’s War Requiem.