THE TENDERNESS OF SILENT MINDS
Benjamin Britten and His War Requiem
by Martha C. Nussbaum
Oxford Univ. Press
285 pages, $29.95
THE TENDERNESS of Silent Minds is primarily about musical work and its cultural underpinnings, yet it is fragrant with philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum’s appreciation not only for music but also for the joyous gay life of composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, tenor Peter Pears. The War Requiem (1962) is a choral and orchestral composition written to celebrate the reconstruction of Coventry Cathedral after World War II. The music is essentially that of a traditional requiem, but the text is largely from the poetry of British poet Wilfred Owen, who was killed in World War I and known for his horrific depiction of the war. The book’s title comes from one of his poems, “Anthem for Doomed Youth.”
We think of war poets mainly in terms of the small group of British writers who set forth in rich and bitter verse the horrors of the trenches in World War I. Two of the best-known of them, Owen and his mentor Siegfried Sassoon, were gay. Keith Douglas, undoubtedly the best-known war poet of World War II, was not. Whether this distinction had anything to do with Benjamin Britten’s decision to use Owen’s poetry as the core of his War Requiem, which is essentially a monument to the recently concluded World War II, is unknown. But Britten, in this work and others, had a strong antiwar vision that was a clear focus for Owen and less so for the more stoic and dreamy Douglas.
What is known, and set forth here in brilliant, layered detail, is that Britten hated war, as did Peter Pears. They were conscientious objectors and even declined certain nonviolent work related to the war effort. This raises certain issues regarding the War Requiem, an immense work that inevitably touches on the question of whether there can ever be a “just war.” It’s a question that takes up a considerable proportion of the book. In the end, to oversimplify greatly, Britten answered in the negative, Nussbaum in the affirmative.
Nussbaum includes a chapter focused on the interactions between Britten and W. H. Auden, not merely in their use of language and musical texts, but in how they thought about life and fit into it, noting that: “They were outsiders as opponents of war in a bellicose culture, as men drawn to same-sex relationships in a culture that made their sex lives illegal, as artists in a philistine British culture that trusted only tame, docile artists, as leftists in the middle-class Tory culture from which both men came and to whom their music must ultimately be addressed, above all as lonely individuals in a solidaristic culture.”
She has also included significant material on Britten’s relationship with Pears, which Auden found objectionable because he thought it would limit Britten’s creative output. Yet this intimate connection ultimately appears as warm tendrils within Britten’s musical creation, as many of his works were written expressly for Pears to sing. The connection between the two is clearly shown in this music.
Some of the most interesting aspects of their relationship are anchored in British cultural and legal norms of the period in which they lived. They made no great secret of their relationship, despite laws that made homosexual activity illegal. At the same time, they led lives that could be described as traditional and verging on stodgy. Throughout the discussion of these men’s relationship runs a theme of respect and preference for customary lives. They both speak of their desire to live as an ordinary couple in domestic terms, despite the remarkable circumstance of their both having careers at the top of their fields. Nussbaum shows that were able to operate at this level due to their iconic status in Britain’s culture. This status led Queen Elizabeth II, whose mother was a long-time friend of Pears and Britten, to recognize their relationship, not only during their lives—she made Britten a baron and knighted Pears—but in her condolence note to Pears upon Britten’s death.
All that said, this book is mainly about music and the details of the creative process, particularly collaboration among artists. It covers the whole range of Britten’s work and much of Pears’ as well. Nussbaum knows the technicalities of music and composition very well and writes in great detail about Britten’s decisions in selecting text, writing scores, and, particularly for the Requiem, choosing the singers and managing the venue. For many readers, this will be of great interest, while others may skim the more technical sections (and step lightly through the introductory material on Arthur Schopenhauer’s view of life and art) to enjoy the exceptionally clear and enlightening explication of how two gay men lived in mid-century Britain.
The timing of the Requiem’s premiere in 1962 overlapped with a significant cultural change in Great Britain. The Wolfenden report recommending, among other things, the decriminalization of homosexual behavior, came out in 1957, and the law was finally changed in 1967. Britten’s deep attachment to traditional rural England ran parallel to his desire that gay relationships be seen as a form of love that was perfectly consistent with that gently conservative bucolic vision. This is perhaps most evident in Britten’s comic opera Albert Herring (1947), which did not quite argue for communities to accept gay relationships, with Pears singing the title role at the premiere.
Britten’s work sometimes has a rather dark tone, as in the Requiem and Peter Grimes (1945), and Nussbaum points out that “many of his interpreters have felt a discomfort about homosexuality that they then project onto Britten. … But there is no sign of torment in the man, nor is there gay panic in the music. … Britten seems always to have connected his own sex life with ideas of beauty, joy and creative freedom.”
She notes that Britten expressed a “deep, loving and joyful” response to Pears’ voice and body, acknowledging that music is embodied love. Always conscious of mortality, Britten worked in his music toward “human continuity, the only sort of immortality he ever believed in. The kind that both he and Pears have attained.” The Tenderness of Silent Minds helps us all to better understand both the joys and the difficulties of creative spirits at work.
Alan Contreras is a writer and higher education consultant who lives in Eugene, Oregon.
