Martial Music

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem was first performed at the consecration of Coventry Cathedral in 1962.

You will recall the cathedral was destroyed in the war and a new version built adjacently by Basil Spence. The Requiem is a reflection on two world wars, certainly not a glorification of war. I think it reflected a mood of reconciliation and sorrow for all the war dead; a sensitive and compassionate composition.

In other times and places regime leaders ordered composers to produce triumphalist fare. I went to Sleeping Beauty at the Proms in 2008; Valery Gergiev conducting The London Symphony Orchestra. The next day Gergiev, a Putin pal, went to South Ossetia and conducted a concert near the ruined building of the parliament as a tribute to the victims of the war. That is the Ossetian “victims” not the Georgians killed by Putin’s unprovoked invasion. 

In 1939 Shostakovich was “commissioned” to compose a Suite on Finnish Themes, intended to celebrate Russia’s conquest of Finland and be performed as the marching bands of the victorious Red Army paraded in Helsinki. It was never performed (until 2003). This is a broad canvas – both space and ignorance stop me expatiating – but I wonder if Gergiev expected to conduct in Kiev this year?

I expect you keep a few hens for eggs and to eat an elderly one with parsley sauce – a favourite of mine as a child at Barmeath. Today there is a shortage of eggs in supermarkets. In 1946 there was a similar egg supply problem with dried eggs on offer as a substitute. The real eggs were sent to Germany where the population was starving. I read this in Chips III. Better an omelette than an oratorio; better compassion than a concerto.