The Harmony of
Hope
Benjamin Britten’s stirring War Requiem
is part of the season’s theme
of music written for healing.
By Martha Thomas
O
Britten’s piece (to be performed by the
BSO Nov. 14–15 to mark the anniversary
of the bombing and the centennial of the
composer’s birth) uses a full orchestra with
a mixed choir, soloists and children’s chorus. The Latin requiem mass is interspersed
with poetry by Wilfred Owen, a British
soldier who was killed in World War I.
“The cathedral became a symbol
of the purposeless destruction during
World War II,” says Matthew Spivey, vice
president of artistic operations for the
BSO. And the Requiem, composed by a
man who was a lifelong pacifist, was meant
Music
that
Mends
10 O v ertur e |
www. bsomusic .org
to symbolize the rebirth of the cathedral,
at the same time reflecting the words that
the provost at the time of the bombing had
etched above the ruined altar in 1940:
“Father Forgive.”
The overarching theme of the Baltimore
Symphony Orchestra’s current season,
says Music Director Marin Alsop, is “music
as solace and as a symbol of reconciliation.”
She points to Leonard Bernstein’s Second
Symphony “Age of Anxiety” (performed
by the BSO Sept. 27–28) as a work that,
like Britten’s, was written as a “quest for
faith” in response to World War II. “When
Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and John Adams’ Transmigration
of Souls, both part of the BSO’s 2013–2014 season, were written with
solace in mind, but many other compositions have come to serve
—by design or not—as a means for healing.
After consulting with a couple of colleagues, Judah E. Adashi, a
composer as well as director and founder of the Evolution Contemporary
Music Series at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University,
helped us put together a list of compositions with a similar purpose.
◗ Samuel Barber’s Adagio
for Strings is the subject of
a book called “The Saddest
Music Ever Written.”
Composed in 1936, it began
as the second movement of his
String Quartet, opus 11, but
has grown to become one of
the most popular pieces of
20th century classical music.
Gr ant Leighto n (Al so p); Ch r is Lee (BSO).
n November 14, 1940, the German Luftwaffe bombed
St. Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry, England, leaving only
the spire rising nearly 300 feet into the sky. But the preserved
ruins remain in remembrance, the highest point in the city, and
a new, modern structure was built adjacent to the original. It was consecrated
in 1962, with Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem composed for the occasion.