HMUSA Store

Benjamin Britten's War Requiem was written for the 1962 re-consecration ceremony for Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed during the Battle of Britain in World War II. The work was a not only a public statement of Britten's anti-war convictions, but also a warning to future generations of the senselessness of taking up arms against one's fellow men. The libretto of the War Requiem intersperses the Latin Mass for the Dead with nine powerful and highly emotional poems written by Wilfred Owen, a World War I footsoldier who was killed a week before the Armistice. Kurt Masur leads the Israel Philharmonic in a live recording made in 1996.