MEMORIAL MUSIC FOR TODAY AND AN EARLIER TIME
For the most memorable oratorio of the 20th century, I would propose Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” (1961), an extra-ordinary large-scale paean to those who served and never survived, now revived by the S.F. Symphony and Chorus. This is a work that leaves the listener profoundly moved on several levels, recalling those who fell in the world wars as well as the destruction of the hallowed Coventry, England Cathedral in the 1940 Blitzkrieg, then its reconstruction. It also provides us with…