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Music and war is a vast topic. This essay limits itself mainly to compositions of Western classical music written in response to World War II. I examine two masterpieces: A Ceremony of Carols (1942), by UK pacifist, Benjamin Britten, composed on a ship menaced by U-boats as he returned from voluntary exile to face the war; and the Quartet for the End of Time (1941), by the Frenchman, Olivier Messiaen, interned in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where 400 prisoners and German officers attended its premiere in freezing conditions. I refer also to Bion’s wartime experiences.
War is studied as a magnification of hatreds and rivalry within families, focusing on the biblical lament of David for the killing of his son Absalom, set to music in masterpieces down the centuries. Finally, Britten’s War Requiem is explored, as a modern testament to the horrors of war, avoiding pomp and emphasising ambivalence and ambiguity.
I consider these pieces from the perspective of Bion’s theories of L, H, K and O, and suggest they bear out not only Winnicott’s theory of transitional space but particularly Segal’s theory of artistic creativity emanating from the depressive position with its depiction of a ruined world, which the music may attempt to begin to repair, particularly through the operation of musically aesthetic listening and containment, a notion which is developed in the paper.