Mr. Zubrow, A couple of thoughts for you.

First, to take a massive work to analysis such as Britten's War Requiem
is a daunting task, so I applaud you.  It is a wonderful work, and I enjoy
reading scholarship on it.  A couple of points in your analysis may not be
on the right track, however.

Wilfred Owen's words for the male soloists, and I emphasize "Owen's," are
purely his.  These were written by a soldier on the Western front of World
War I who was shocked and horrified at the brutality, irony (you hit the
nail on the head with that one), and blatant disregard for human life that
war incites in man.  Britten could have just set these words alone to music
and have achieved some sense of the irrationality and irony man displays
through war, but Britten saw a greater picture by which man's folly could
be portrayed.

Britten's design for the War Requiem, as I see it, is a statement-rebuttal
sense of form.  If you examine the Latin text of the Requiem mass and then
Owen's, Britten saw that the secular, arranged in a certain way, could
comment on the sacred.  This is one level of irony, and man's folly which
is made tantamount with the Abraham-Isaac retelling, that Britten achieves
through this form.  Ultimately, Britten's scorn is not aimed at some
"weakness of God," but at man's weakness to carry out the will of God.

(As a side note, take notice of Owen's Abraham-Isaac telling and the
Bible's Cain and Able slaying.  Man strikes again.)

Your opinion of the chorus is also correct:  they do represent convention.
Yet, it is not a direct representation.  Britten's choice of the tritone
(diabolus in musica) on which to harmonically base an entire work is
a fundamental level of interpretation of man's discordance with his
Creator (not to mention discordant with the majority of this genre's
representatives).  Just as the tritone is discordant in functional harmony,
the tritone is a symbol of man's pride and avarice toward the ultimate will
of God.  It is not the inability of God to stop war (or the killing of
Isaac), but man's dissonance with God.

These are just comments that may give you another light into Britten's
creative process and the War Requiem's conception.  I find myself calling
this work one of the staples of the twentieth century for the requiem genre
as well as in the whole of music literature, for it gives the world insight
into the power of art and music combined, the tender and fragile nature of
man, and ultimately, the spiritual core of man and our attitudes toward
God.

Good luck in your analyses and listening.  I envy you of your opportunity
to have attended a live performance of such a master work and master
performers.  Sincerely,

Daniel Farris
University of North Texas
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