- Date: 1940
- Composer: Benjamin Britten
- Period: Modern (1910-1949)
Review
In early 1940, Britten received through the British Council an invitation to write a work to celebrate an anniversary of an unspecified "reigning dynasty." At length he learned that the piece would be performed during festivities surrounding the 2,600th anniversary of the foundation of the Mikado's dynasty in Japan. Britten sent an outline to the Japanese authorities, which was approved, but Japanese officials rejected the completed work, the Sinfonia da Requiem, on the grounds of its Christian program (inappropriate for a Shinto culture) and its melancholy nature. Britten labored under the mistaken impression that the work need be a funereal memorial to Japan's first emperor.So the Sinfonia da Requiem was first performed in 1941 by the New York Philharmonic -- eight months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor -- and Britten ultimately dedicated the one-movement symphony to the memory of his parents; the work inevitably took on broader implications during the course of World War II. Britten's musical inspiration seems to have been, to a large degree, Gustav Mahler, though Britten was working on a compact scale. There's also a Bergian intensity derived from certain harmonic details picked up from the latter composer's Violin Concerto.
The Sinfonia da Requiem falls into three linked movements, each bearing a title from the Latin Mass for the Dead. The grief-laden first movement, Lachrymosa, opens with a terrifying funeral march marked by aggressive drumbeats. This movement's middle section includes an extended saxophone solo, another element inspired by the Berg Violin Concerto.
The second movement, Dies Irae, is a warlike scherzo, full of fanfares and instrumental outbursts that clash as they build to an increasingly chaotic climax. The final movement, Requiem aeternam, features a tender flute theme that calls to mind certain moments of Mahler's ninth and unfinished tenth symphonies. The symphony progresses from mourning through violent grief to reflection and acceptance, perhaps even an exhausted optimism. ~ All Music Guide
