Hour of Lead
Eve de Castro-Robinson (1956-)

This work takes its title from a powerful Emily Dickinson poem, quoted below for full impact:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Hour of Lead comprises a set of movements on the notion of pain, whether stabbing, bittersweet, profound, or releasing, allowing a full range of sonorities to be heard from the orchestra. It is also inspired by Ode to Hilma, the mighty, meditative canvases by Aotearoa painter Julia Morison shown this year in Wellington’s City gallery.

Preceding Britten’s War Requiem in this programme, it is a sombre reminder of life’s fragility, yet concludes on a note of defiance.

War Requiem
Benjamin Britten (1913 – 1976)

In 1962, Britten was asked to provide music for the dedication of Coventry Cathedral, rebuilt after Luftwaffe bombing raids flattened the beloved 14th-century Cathedral in 1940. An important symbolic occasion, it allowed Britten to air his pacifist beliefs and his faith in humanity’s capacity for compassion. In a break from tradition, he blended the traditional Latin mass for the dead with nine poems by the WW1 poet, Wilfred Owen, (1893–1918) whom he regarded as “by far England’s greatest war poet, and one of the most original poets of the century”. Owen’s poems accorded with Britten’s own pacifist beliefs, and by accepting the commission he was given a very public platform for those beliefs.

In Britten’s own words, he offered the War Requiem as “an act of reparation”. On the title page of the score, he quoted the poet, "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity …All a poet can do today is warn.”

The War Requiem was a sensation when first performed — a rare example of a contemporary work that spoke directly to the public on the deepest levels and was immediately embraced by it. Its success was reflected in sales of its first recording, which sold 200,000 copies within five months.

The requiem requires a very large orchestra, a smaller chamber orchestra, two organs, three soloists, a main chorus, and a boys’ choir. The range of forces represent three main strands in the requiem: the tenor and baritone soloist give voice to Owens’ poetry and represent two soldiers from opposing sides. They are accompanied by the chamber ensemble. The female soloist and full choir carry the more traditional requiem mass and its Latin liturgy: a public response to national grief and mourning. Britten reserves the pure, otherworldly voices of the children’s choir, accompanied by chamber organ, for a more detached angelic perspective.

In Britten’s work, Wilfred Owens’ poetry often contradicts the solace of the traditional requiem text, and that conflict is echoed by the music’s centering on a tritone interval made famous by Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. In a liturgical sense, the tritone is called “the Devil’s interval”. But in dramatic terms — and Britten, through his operas, was a great dramatist — it creates instability and conflict. Its inherent tension fits the sickness of human nature that underpins war. This least-restful interval begins the Requiem Aeternam (“grant them eternal rest”), as the choir and chimes lay down a series of F#s and C-naturals. The boys’ chorus sings pious certainties, (“For to you a hymn is proper…for unto you all flesh shall come”) yet their phrases all begin and end with these unsettling pitches. Thus Britten uses his craft to challenge the traditional requiem mass — and by the end, perhaps, forge it into a different truth.

When the tenor soloist enters, his message starkly contradicts the peace enjoined by the requiem’s traditional text. Instead, “Only the monstrous anger of the guns./Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle…”) The bells — which the orchestra has featured — are mocked:  “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle…”

Brass fanfares are a standard opening for a Dies Irae movement. In Britten’s version they're alarm calls, filled with warning. The choir chants is an off-kilter march in 7/4 time. The choir’s liturgy is uplifting: “The wondrous trumpet, spreading its sound/to the tombs of all regions, will gather all before the throne/Death will be stupefied…” But the solo baritone sings Owen’s poetry very much in opposition, “Bugles sang, saddening the evening air, and bugles answered, sorrowful to hear/Voices of boys were by the riverside/Sleep mothered them/ and left the twilight sad…” The soprano and choir follow singing of judgement and entreating mercy. Tenor and baritone reply with Owen’s verses, “Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death/Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland/pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand…” And so it continues, with the male soloists describing their experiences in the trenches and the choir’s interludes trying build a framework of sin, punishment and redemption. Both views converge with the tenor solo, “Move him into the sun — gently its touch awoke him once…if anything might rouse him now/the kind old sun will know”, followed by the choir’s “dona eis requiem (grant them rest”).

The Offertorium is set against Owen’s retelling of the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. While the choir and boys’ chorus sing the traditional mass’s “..bring them again into holy light/as once you promised to Abraham/and to his seed”, the tenor counters with Owen’s version: the patriarch receives the angel’s instruction to spare his son and sacrifice a ram instead. “But the old man would not so, but slew his son, —/and half the seed of Europe, one by one.”

The choir fills the Sanctus with exultation: “Lord God of the hosts/filled are heavens and earth with your glory…blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord/Hosanna in the highest.” The baritone soloist counters with Owens’ most despairing lines, “Shall life renew these bodies? Of a truth/All death will He annul, all tears assuage?…” Age and Earth reply, “It is death. Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified/ nor my titanic tears, the sea, be dried.”

Throughout the Agnus Dei, the choir outlines that uneasy tritone in a stepwise movement. Britten resolves the tension only once, in a luminous momentary chord. The tenor follows, in a rare break from his role as the soldier, singing the Latin prayer, “Donna nobis pacem” (“grant them peace”).

This builds towards the terrifying Libera Me, with the choir and soprano crying out for relief from the tumultuous horror of battle. This chaos gives way to the heart-rending centrepiece of the work, based on Owen’s great poem, "Strange Meeting", which records the tragic understanding and forgiveness between two enemy combatants beyond death. “I am the enemy you killed, my friend.” There is the regret of lives and deeds left undone, the profound desire to undo War’s destruction, and finally, on the resolution of Britten’s persistent tritone, the invitation to rest in peace, together. 

Fittingly, the pure voices of the boys’ chorus join the music for the final ascent, “May the angels lead you into Paradise…”