A YEAR OF REFLECTIONS ON THE TWO WORLD WARS
A fter eight months of preparation and hours of rehearsals, the Foundation Schools assembled in February to perform Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem in the Royal Festival Hall. The grandeur of the setting was matched by the impressive nature of the ensemble, with a 110-strong orchestra and 376 choristers joining forces for Britten’s seminal work. Benjamin Britten, one of the United Kingdom’s most acclaimed composers, wrote his War Requiem following the Second World War. It was commissioned for and first performed at the opening of Coventry Cathedral, which had been rebuilt after bomb-damage left it as a hollow façade. The piece matched that setting perfectly, embodying a sense of both recuperation and progression after the suffering of the war. At the same time, the Requiem served to ref lect upon the horrors, and console the grieving population. The piece reminded Britons that there was still hope, if only that of the final words ‘let them rest in peace.’ Britten himself was a pacifist, which is clearly ref lected in the piece, both musically and lyrically; the music traverses different emotions during its 90-minute course. It begins in a funereal style, lamenting the war’s many dead, before passing through a musical rendition of the fear and torment of war, as felt by both soldier and family, culminating in what one critic cynically described as a ‘Kleenex at the ready’ ending. The piece was composed by Britten, but the words are borrowed from Wilfred Owen’s poems written in response to the First World War, which give the piece much of its heart-wrenching melancholy. The lyrics vary greatly; at times they show the despair of Owen and Britten, asking ‘What passing bells for those who die as cattle?’ In other places they describe the experience of the soldier,
Commemorating the fallen in full voice Toby Stinson (Year 13) ref lects on the Foundation Schools' performance of Benjamin Britten’s great War Requiem
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