Britten: War Requiem (Cambridge Music Handbooks)
The book examines Britten's War Requiem, written in 1962 to celebrate the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and uniting the famous anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass, from various viewpoints. Britten's and Owen's pacifist beliefs are compared, and the chronology of the compositional process unravelled from documentary and manuscript sources. The musical language is analysed in detail, and the fluctuating critical responses to the score are assessed.