In 1965, the United Nations asked Benjamin Britten to compose a choral work to celebrate the organization’s 20th anniversary. The piece, it hoped, would be “the natural and inevitable sequel to the War Requiem.” The Secretary-General, U Thant, explained that the new work would be premiered at the UN Day concert on October 24, 1965, in the General Assembly Hall in New York, where yearly concerts had been held since 1954. 

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… is Reader in Law at Queen Mary University of London. She is author of Articulating Security (Cambridge University Press, 2022); her current project is on the United Nations and the arts.