Britten’s requiem embraces unusual sound
Though Veteran’s Day comes every year, to some it may seem like just another holiday. For the American Festival Chorus and Orchestra, it’s a day to remember and honor those who have payed the ultimate price for freedom.
Cory Evans, the professor of choral studies at USU, said the AFCO has joined with several other groups, including the USU Chamber Singers, to perform Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” on Nov. 12 at the Ellen Eccles Theatre.
“The music is his mournful warning to the world about the effects of war,” Evans said.
Britten’s commentary throughout the requiem, Evans said, is about learning lessons through war. He said the music makes one feel that the U.S. hasn’t learned from the tragedies of war.
John Ribera, the managing director for the AFCO, said Benjamin Britten was a conscientious objector.
“He didn’t want to go to war, and he didn’t believe in war,” he said.
Evans said Britten uses the pealing of bells through the entire requiem, which is a Catholic mass for the dead, except the bells are set a tri-tone apart. He said the use of the tri-tone is often called the devil in music, a “really ugly interval” in music that most composers try to avoid.
Britten embraces this ugly sound and uses it through out his requiem, Evans said. The irony and the agony of the tri-tone grips the audience throughout the entire piece, he added.
“At times, it can sound really ugly but it helps bring about different emotions and ideas,” said Jordan Eavis, a sophmore majoring in choral education and a member of the USU Chamber Singers. “It can really open people’s eyes to not only the message Benjamin Britten was trying to portray about war but also the power of music.”
The printed program for those who attend will be extensive, Ribera said, and he hopes audience members will take the time to read through it, because “the words are extremely powerful.”
He said along with music and the traditional Latin words found in a requiem, Britten has woven in the poetry of Wilfred Owen, a British World War II soldier.
“As a soldier Owen would write poetry based on what he was seeing on the front line in these battles and the horrible things that were going on,” Evans said.
He said Owens found a powerful way to write about the war and how these soldiers must have felt facing almost certain death.
“It’s griping and gut wrenching the way Britten has represented the horrors of what the war is and what it has done,” he said.
The work is moving, Ribera said, but in some respects it’s dark.
“It ‘s something that is thought provoking about war and it’s impact on people,” he said. “It’s not something that you go away whistling the tune, but it is something where we can think about the impact of war.”
Ribera said several Cache Valley residents have died fighting in different wars.
“Families have been changed, children have been raised without fathers,” he said, “and they’ve lost brothers.”
The impact of war is not always seen, because the media often glorifies it in movies, Ribera said.
Britten’s work is rarely performed, Ribera said. The last time it was performed in the state of Utah was almost 10 years ago.
“You probably only get to hear a work of this magnitude once, maybe twice, in a life time,” he said. “We’re not all going to go to war, we’re not all going to be in the trenches, and we’re not all going to be inhaling some kind of mustard gas that is a nerve agent that kills people. We’re not going to experience that individually, but certainly the emotions that come with war are expressed in this music.”
– karlee.ulrich@aggiemail.usu.edu