SUNY Potsdam

"Benjamin Britten's War Requiem as Parable Art". This presentation about Britten's work written for the 1962 rededication of the war-ravished Coventry Cathedral explores its relationship to W.H. Auden's concept of parable art. Though the one-time friends had gone their separate ways by the early 1940s, Auden's socialist-tinged theories remained with Britten throughout his life. His War Requiem, is, perhaps, the fullest expression of his beliefs about the artist's responsibility to society.

Vicki Stroeher is an Associate Professor of Music History at Marshall University and currently serves as Interim Associate Dean for the College of Fine Arts. Her most recent presentations include the 2012 North American British Music Studies Association Conference, and the “Britten in Context” conference in Liverpool Hope University in 2010, the “Literary Britten” conference held at Girton College, Cambridge University in September 2011. She is also co-editor alongside Nicholas Clark and Jude Brimmer of A Life of the Two of Us: The Correspondence of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, 1937-1976, forthcoming.