Benjamin Britten - War Requiem
The War Requiem was not meant to be a pro-British piece or a glorification of British soldiers, but a public statement of Britten's anti-war convictions. Britten was a lifelong pacifist and the Requiem was a denunciation of the futility of war, along with the senseless suffering and monstrous death and destruction that it brings. The fact that Britten wrote the piece for three specific soloists - a German baritone (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), a Russian soprano (Galina Vishnevskaya), and a British tenor (Peter Pears) - demonstrated that he had more than the losses of his own country in mind, and symbolized the importance of reconciliation. War Requiem was written for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral where it was first performed; Coventry Cathedral had been destroyed during the Battle of Britain in World War II. Britten was commissioned to write a piece for the ceremony marking the completion of a new cathedral, designed by Basil Spence, built along side the the ruins of the original millenium-old structure.