The Story of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem

War Requiem is the powerful choral piece commissioned for and performed at the Festival that marked the Consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral 50 years ago.

Its story is part of the story of Coventry Cathedral’s phoenix-like rise from Coventry’s post war ashes is a wonderful tale of hope, passion and hard work.

It is hard to imagine quite how vast were the individual and global efforts that went into every element of the design, construction, creation and production that delivered the many cathedral components.

Whilst Sir Basil Spence inspired the world with his architectural vision; as Sutherland laboured on his remarkable tapestry ‘Christ the King’; and even as Epstein forged St Michael’s victory over Satan (left) … Benjamin Britten was commissioned to create a choral opus to be performed at the Consecration.

This extraordinary new book by Michael Foster captures and eloquently shares the woven tapestry of artistic emotions that led to the creation and performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.

It is written and now published to celebrate the Cathedral’s Golden Jubilee.

Published by the Cathedral and with profits going to the Cathedral.

War Requiem concerns the brutality and futility of war; the senseless suffering, monstrous death and the destruction that it brings.

A setting of the Latin Requiem Mass is interspersed with the sardonic and disillusioned First World War poetry of Wilfred Owen. If Britten’s music was the sheath, the raw steel of the bloodied sword was Owen.

The book is as it suggests, ‘a story’. It is accessible as a piece of incredible post war history and an intuitive missing piece of the Britten jigsaw. Find out why Coventry is a Cathedral that was very nearly never built; and why War Requiem is a work very nearly never heard.

Visit website and purchase the book at: http://www.warrequiem.co.uk/