Benjamin Britten\u27s Silent \u27Epilogue\u27 to The Holy Sonnets of John Donne

BENJAMIN BRITTEN\u27S War requiem (1962) is widely viewed as one of the 20th century\u27s commemorative masterpieces, a work that emerged from the long shadow of World War 2. Yet Britten\u27s immediate and heartrending response to the horrors of the conflict, only weeks after the cessation of fighting in Europe, is his song-cycle The holy sonnets of John Donne op.35 (1945). Famously, Britten completed the cycle from 2 to 19 August of that year at Snape. Little known, however, is that on 15 August 1945, 13 days after the first song, \u27Oh my blacke Soule!\u27, was dated, and four days before the extant final song of the cycle, \u27Death, be not proud\u27, was autographed, a heretofore unheard \u27Epilogue\u27, a completed and fully notated song of some 40 bars, received three final strikes: a pencil line starting in the upper leftmost corner and cutting downward across the autograph manuscript of each of its three pages. A setting of text from Donne\u27s \u27Meditation XVII\u27 that contains the iconic lines \u27For whom the bell tolls\u27, the song was never included in Britten\u27s final score, its plaintive utterance never heard on the concert stage. Neither sent to the publisher nor given a single performance, the pencil draft manuscript sits virtually unseen in the archival vault of the Britten-Pears Foundation in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, protected from decay yet essentially silent to the world