Symphony, Chorales to Perform in Costa Mesa : Hall Expects to Learn Again From Britten’s ‘War Requiem’

My subject is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity . . .

All a poet can do today is warn.”

--Wilfred Owen

When pacifist British composer Benjamin Britten wanted to denounce the savagery of war in his “War Requiem,” the composer could find no better texts to integrate into the liturgy of the Mass for the dead than the poems of Wilfred Owen.

Owen had been a promising poet who dabbled in Keatsian sensibilities, until he enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles in 1915 and joined the ranks of idealistic youth of Britain who went off to fight the Kaiser and make the world safe for democracy.

He was wounded but, refusing an opportunity to take a desk job, returned to the trenches. He rose to the rank of company commander and won the Military Cross for bravery.

A week before the signing of the Armistice, Owen was killed at Ors on the Sambre Canal in France, on Nov. 4, 1918. He was 25.

In the last 2 years of his life, his poetry evolved radically from Romantic themes to bitter attacks on the cruelty and waste of war, coupled with a deep pity for its victims.

But Owen went beyond raging and ranting, especially beyond denouncing the “enemy” in the bes tial terms common in the propaganda of the day.

He wrote:

But they who love the greater love

Lay down their life; they do not hate.

William Hall will conduct the Pacific Symphony and the combined Master Chorale of Orange County and the William Hall Chorale in Britten’s “War Requiem” on Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

In “Strange Meeting,” one of the poems he left unfinished, Owen relates a ghastly, imaginary meeting with a German soldier, who tells him: “I am the enemy you killed, my friend.”

The two make a separate peace. But the poem breaks off, the thought inconclusive.

Britten chose “Strange Meeting” to be the last Owen poem in the “War Requiem” and went on to weave a line from it into the final chorus “In paradisum.”

Throughout the work, the apocalyptic imagery of the requiem text and Owen’s poetry combine and illuminate each other in surprising, resonant ways.

Hall said the “War Requiem” “speaks not only the pity that Owen talks about, but brings to life what centuries of war have brought in the name of God or church. . . . The message is man’s stupidity to man.

“What Britten has done is very profound, but on a simple scale that brings it into focus for the audience immediately,” Hall added.

“An audience can quickly identify because (part of) it is in English and so beautifully set. They follow the text and immediately get involved with what the two men are talking about. . . . It’s almost like you choose sides, then realize at the end, you can’t choose sides.

“The German and English soldiers realized that they love exactly the same thing, everything about them is the same, other than the language.

“Once they get by the language, they realize they are exactly the same: ‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend.’ The entire work gets to that point.”

Unlike Owen, Britten was not a combatant. “He was one of the great figures of pacifism,” Hall said.

Britten immigrated to America in 1939, before Germany’s invasion of Poland started World War II but soon began to discover a deep sense of his English roots. He returned to England in the spring of 1942. He was called up for active service but was exempted as a conscientious objector.

His “War Requiem” was commissioned for ceremonies surrounding the May 30, 1962, reconsecration of St. Michael’s (Coventry) Cathedral, which had been destroyed in the air raids of 1940-41.

The work can be divided into three levels. In the foreground are the two soldiers--one English, one German--who are accompanied only by the chamber orchestra, which allows them to express private thoughts.

In the mid-ground are the public celebrants of the Mass--soprano soloist, full chorus and full orchestra--who represent “the universal church,” Hall said.

Finally, there is a chorus of boys’ voices, innocent and pure but remote from the human suffering. (Hall, however, will use the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, which also includes girls. “I like it better,” he said. “There is a little more warmth.”)

“Every time I’ve done it,” Hall said, “I’ve gained from it, learned new things, not just musically, but on a grander scale of what life is all about. It has touched audiences all over the world. . . .

“Perhaps there will be someone who is listening, who will be moved so much by this poet to say, somewhere down the line, enough is enough, let us stop this stupidity. That may be a little Pollyanna-ish perhaps on my part, but I think that music has that kind of power.”

William Hall will conduct the Pacific Symphony and the combined Master Chorale of Orange County and the William Hall Chorale in Britten’s “War Requiem” at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive , Costa Mesa. Soloists will include soprano Karon Poston, tenor Jonathan Mack and baritone John Atkins. The Los Angeles Children’s Choir will also sing. Tickets: $11 to $32.50. Information: (714) 556-6262.