Musical Creativity in the Line of Fire

Francis Grier is a psychoanalyst in private practice in London. He is the Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Speaker: Francis Grier, psychoanalyst and musician. 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. Francis Grier is a psychoanalyst in private practice in London. He is the Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and a Training Analyst and Supervisor of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is also a couple psychotherapist. He has written and edited papers, chapters and two books on couple psychotherapy, including Oedipus and the Couple (2005, Karnac). Before training psychoanalytically, he was a professional musician and has recently written music for choirs and composed organ compositions for two new CDs. Joint Organisers: Severnside Institute of Psychotherapy & Institute of Psychoanalysis