POETICS OF B. BRITTEN’S “WAR REQUIEM”: BETWEEN PACIFISM AND THE SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS OF ANGLICANITY

Abstract

The study summarizes the religious-content and poetic-intonation specifics of B. Britten’s «War Requiem» in the midst of spiritual searches of English culture and music of the 20th century. The purpose of the work is to reveal the spiritual-content, genre-stylistic and poetic-intonational uniqueness of B. Britten’s «War Requiem» in the confluence of the religious and ethical instructions of Anglicanism and the composer’s pacifist beliefs. The methodology of the work has a complex nature and is based on a combination of the principles of interdisciplinary, historical-typological, hermeneutic and genre-stylistic research methods. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by its analytical perspective, which takes into account not only the innovative approach of B. Britten to the reproduction of the typology of the requiem, but also its Anglican genesis, supplemented by the composer’s pacifist beliefs. Conclusions. B. Britten is an outstanding English composer of the 20th century, who succeeded in his multifaceted legacy, on the one hand, to revive the spiritual traditions of the domestic musical culture, and on the other hand, to fit them into the context of the colorful musical modernism, while preserving his author’s unique style and deep understanding of the spiritual the essence of the historical processes of his time. B. Britten’s pacifist worldview, focused on a negative attitude to any war, also rooted in the religious teachings of Anglicanism, in combination with the spiritual and enlightening orientation of the concepts of most of the composer’s works, determined the idea of the «War Requiem», its poeticintonational and genre originality . On the one hand, the work, structurally built on the basis of an organic combination of the Latin requiem and the poetry of W. Owen, genetically resembles the traditions of the «Anglican requiem». On the other hand, the wide figurative and symbolic spectrum of the content of B. Britten’s composition reveals its contact with passion and mystery, focused not only on the theme of sacrifice, but also on the spiritual Transfiguration and their corresponding musical and rhetorical reproduction. The discovery of this kind of genre synthesis in the music of the 20th and early 21st centuries will allow us to deepen the study of English choral music and its spiritual and ethical guidelines.