Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20

Program notes

About the Work

The Sinfonia da Requiem is the work in which the young Benjamin Britten first found his full orchestral voice: a dark, powerful, intensely personal symphony written in 1940, when he was just twenty-six and living in self-imposed exile in America as war engulfed Europe. It carries a strange origin story: it was commissioned (through the British Council) by the Japanese government to help celebrate the 2,600th anniversary of the Japanese imperial dynasty. Britten, a lifelong and committed pacifist, responded with a work of mourning and protest, giving its three movements Latin titles drawn from the Catholic Mass for the Dead, a choice the Japanese authorities found unacceptable, both for its Christian liturgical references and its sombre, un-celebratory character. They rejected it; it received its triumphant premiere in New York in 1941 under John Barbirolli instead. Britten dedicated the score to the memory of his parents, who had both recently died, so the public statement of anti-war grief is bound up with private mourning.

Though relatively compact at around twenty minutes, the Sinfonia is symphonic in weight and ambition, its three movements played continuously. It is music of real emotional force (anguished, threatening and ultimately consoling) and a fascinating glimpse of Britten on the brink of his maturity, already a master of orchestral colour and dramatic pacing. It makes a gripping, weighty opening to a programme much concerned with anxiety, mortality and the search for peace.

What to Listen For

The three movements run without a break. Listen first for the Lacrymosa (‘weeping’), which Britten called ‘a slow marching lament’: it opens with a great hammer-blow on timpani and low strings, over which a grieving, swaying theme builds inexorably through wave after wave of intensity to a shattering climax: music of raw, oppressive sorrow.

This collapses into the Dies irae (‘Day of Wrath’), which Britten described as ‘a form of Dance of Death’: listen for the frantic, flickering energy, the nervous fanfares and skittering rhythms, building to a violent, terrifying climax, a vision of war and destruction. Then, out of the chaos, comes the Requiem aeternam (‘eternal rest’): listen for the magical transition as the music finds its way to calm, with a gentle, consoling melody on flutes over rocking harps and strings, Britten’s hard-won ‘final resolution,’ a benediction of peace after grief and terror. The whole work is a journey from lament through nightmare to consolation, and a remarkable achievement for so young a composer.