The second performance of the War Requiem came a week later in Colston Hall. We were large forces and disposed rather differently from when I sang the work there before. I was positioned round the side of the choir with a sideways-on view of the conductor and a fine view of the percussion section. (Like the Post‘s reporter I was impressed with the number of instruments the main percussionist controlled with ease, but that is what you get with the professionals.)
So why do I still have reservations about this piece? At least it doesn’t have one of Britten’s weak points, his rather arch sense of humour. My problem is that it presents itself as a radical piece of music without actually being so. There are some bits I find sublime: the Agnus Dei and the transition to the children’s voices in the middle of the Offertory – the soldiers of a future generation. And the choral writing in the Recordare and Confutatis movements (the latter a cousin of the men’s chorus in the Gloriana choral dances) is very fine. These are among the less apparently innovative parts of the Requiem – sometimes less can be more. I’m still playing the game of identifying allusions to other composers. Now I know the Grande Messe des Morts I’ll throw that into the mix (the barely-moving voice parts in the Offertory), and just what is going on in the Owen setting at the end of the Sanctus/Benedictus? It sounds like Webern, but maybe it derives from late Stravinsky, with which I’m not very familiar (and might in that case partly explain Stravinsky’s reaction to the piece).
Finally, is there anyone out there, other than me, who cannot hear Britten’s setting of the word ‘knife’ without thinking of Hitchcock’s treatment of this word in his film Blackmail?