A YEAR OF REFLECTIONS ON THE TWO WORLD WARS
An unseen choir of boys and girls, emerging like the voices of the dead
imagining ‘this day, this day of wrath / Shall consume the world in ashes’. However, some of the most affecting lyrics are those sung by the soloists, who serve almost as narrators, telling us:
Move him into the sun — Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering in fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow.
The performance of Britten’s War Requiem by the Foundation Schools was intended to serve as part of the schools’ commemoration of the 1918 armistice, which inevitably ref lects upon the Second World War as well. However, it was also more personally linked to the experience of the three schools, who lost 808 pupils and staff between them. As Director of Music Richard Mayo remarked, ‘The War Requiem had long been on my wish-list of pieces to perform [and] it happens to fit our three Foundation Schools extremely well.’ Part of the decision to perform the Requiem was simply that, as Mayo acknowledges, ‘Britten’s Music is a masterpiece — probably the greatest piece of its type to come from the 20th century.’ The performance involved three orchestras and eight choirs from the Foundation Schools, rehearsing separately, then gradually integrating, before finally coming together in the weeks preceding the performance. The night itself was a grand spectacle beginning with a solitary bell tolling, accompanied by a rising chant of ‘requiem’, immediately establishing the scene of war, death and remembrance. This was lifted by an orchestral tide to an unsettling crescendo, setting the audience on edge from the outset and making it very clear that it was not going to glorify war by any means. Behind the soloists were the doleful voices of the soldiers and the dead. This
was increased by the skilful imitation of the sounds of war, using the brass section in the style of cavalry horns proclaiming a charge, while harsh drum-beats intersected the melody like gunfire. One of the most powerful devices used in the performance was an unseen choir of boys and girls, emerging like the voices of the dead calling back - the song of the innocent, forever lost. At times the music was a sea of strings, crisply intersected by a sonorous soprano voice. This was sometimes replaced by an arresting wall of sound, cut through by staccato punches from the choir in a lamentation of the horrors of war. A rippling canon of ‘requiem’ returned, rising from muttered litany to baleful exclamation. By the end of the performance, you found yourself lulled into a sense of quietude, before the ostinato of ‘requiem’ returned once more, leaving the audience with a sense of sorrow for the fallen and the heavy toll of the bell: a warning not to allow the same tragedy to be repeated.
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