Benjamin Britten's War Requiem Op.66 includes words from the Missa pro defunctis and the poems of Wilfred Owen.Commissioned to write a work to celebrate the rebuilding of the bomb-damaged Coventry Cathedral in 1962 Britten used the opportunity to write a large-scale composition embodying his deeply held pacifist and humanitarian beliefs. The result the War Requiem is a timeless expression of the brutality and inhumanity of war.