A highlight of this year’s Promenade Concerts season will be a performance on Saturday 17 August of the War Requiem, a large-scale work by Benjamin Britten.
Britten, a pacifist and conscientious objector, wrote the War Requiem as his artistic response to the horrors of war, and as a reflection of his anti-war beliefs. The Royal Albert Hall’s website says: “Never has this tense, angry and cautiously optimistic work seemed more relevant since its first performance 62 years ago.”
The Peace Pledge Union – the UK’s primary pacifist organisation, of which Britten was a prominent member for decades – booked an advertisement in the concert programme several weeks ago, highlighting how Britten’s philosophy continued to resonate with many people to this day.
Now however, the producers of the programme have told the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) that the BBC has overruled the acceptance of the PPU advert, which is being pulled from the programme before it goes to press.
The advertisement was in no way polemical, says the PPU. It was a measured statement by an organisation with which Britten himself was involved. It pointed out that Britten’s worldview is more than just historical, and the perspectives conveyed by his music still inspire people today.
Against a background of a photograph of the memorial to Conscientious Objectors in Tavistick Square, London, the text of the advertisement reads:
Britten’s War Requiem is a profound ecpression of his personal renunciation of war.
His art and his life, as with many great creative artists, were not separate.
The pronciples which led Britten to compose the War Requiem also led him to become a committed meber of the Peace Pledge Union for decades, until the end of his life.
The belief that warfare is never the answer, and that better ways of dealing with conflict can and must be found, are not just part of our political and musical history. The ideas that inspired Britten continue to inspire people today – including the thousands of current members of the Peace Pledge Union and its sister organisations around the world.
Albert Beale of the PPU said: “It’s hard to reconcile the BBC’s willingness to promote a profoundly political piece of musical culture – such as the War Requiem – whilst refusing to allow an organisation with which the composer was closely associated to refer to the reality of its timeless message.”
“It’s ironic that for the media, peace seems these days to be more controversial than war. Can it really be that violence is non-political, but peace is political?”
* More information on Britten’s pacifist philosophy, connection to the PPU, and motivations for developing the War Requiem here.
* Source: Peace Pledge Union