Music and The Great War (1914-18)

[A Lark Ascending]

The wave of commemorative activity has been building pace in the UK since last year and will probably go mad on June 28th.

Brings together for me two areas of interest - music and history. I'll be taking a party of kids to Ypres and the Somme in October and have things to organise at work so it will be a focus for me over the next year.

Thought a thread on music associated with The Great War might be interesting. Although I've put it in the classical section, feel free to reference beyond.

British classical music is rich in association but I'm especially interested in responses from other countries. The ones that immediately spring to mind for me are:

Butterworth - handful of compositions, none about the war but evocative of it due to his early death on the Somme.

Britten - War Requiem - more universal but the English texts are drawn from the WWI poets. Some people get snooty about it but I've always found it enormously powerful and moving.

Bridge - Oration - a little known cello concerto/symphony that again powerfully evokes the war from a pacifist who lost colleagues in the maelstrom.

Bridge - Cello Sonata - not about the war but always has me thinking of it - the first movement is in his Edwardian/Impressionistic pre-war style; the second written much later enters the more ambiguous style influenced by continental developments. Always sounds to me like a mind changed by the war.

Vaughan Williams - Third Symphony - an elegy for the war victims disguised as a pastoral symphony.

Debussy - the late sonatas for small groups of instruments. Again, nothing specific about the war and the overall melancholy is as likely to be personal as a reaction to world events. But I can't help relating it.

And in a different field (folk):

Scores of songs revived, written, recorded by Coope, Boyes and Simpson and June Tabor about the war. Some great collaborations with European musicians on all sides.

That'll do from me for now.

Be interested to hear what moves you. Music about the war, by composers in the war, influenced by the war.

Edited May 11, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[soulpope]

Very interesting thread.......

Was "circling" around subject CD, but still not done....

Edited May 11, 2014 by soulpope

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

furthermore :

Edited May 11, 2014 by soulpope

[A Lark Ascending]

Very interesting thread.......

Was "circling" around subject CD, but still not done....

Don't know that one.

I do have this:

The main piece was written for the war effort in 1917.

[BillF]

Two things come to mind:

Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat, which I've always liked.

The first jazz records were made at this time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODJB

[soulpope]

Taras Bulba was composed in memory referring to the massacre of Russians in WW1 - both Taras Bulba and Sinfonietta here in a landmark recording with Ancerl and the CPO.

Edited May 11, 2014 by soulpope

[A Lark Ascending]

The first jazz records were made at this time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODJB

Be interesting to think if there was any impact of World War I on jazz.

The only one I can think of is the start (or at least acceleration) of The Great Migration from South to North with the expansion of war industries in the North. The music going north and west alongside.

Taras Bulba was composed in memory referring to the massacre of Russians in WW1

I did not know that.

This is an interesting disc of songs by composers who served in World War I:

Most are not about the war. In some cases ,like some of Ivor Gurney's, they seem to evoke the world they've left behind. Gurney's is a very sad tale of a mind unhinged by his experiences there.

Bliss and Moeran were also there. Bliss did his tribute with 'Morning Heroes' which I've only recently started to listen to. Moeran does not seem to have written directly about it though from what I've read a head wound had a serious effect on his mental stability.

The whole post-World War French approach to music (picked up on in the '20s by Bliss, Lambert and Walton) - frivolous, mocking, playful (Les Six etc) - also seems like a deliberate attempt to escape the 'serious' musical world of pre-1914, as if that world had caused the cataclysm. A bit like the post-1945 reaction of the 'avant garde'.

Edited May 11, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[soulpope]

Josef Suk "Legend of death Victors" (1919-1920)

[sidewinder]

Holst's 'Planets' Suite almost struck me as overwhelmingly influenced by the impact of WW1.

[soulpope]

The Second Symphony being rather a mournful work in which Roussel incorporates (for sure horrible) experiences envisaged in WW I during his service as ambulance driver and artillery officer

He wrote to his wife, “We shall have to begin to live again under a new conception of life; which is not to say that everything that was done before the war will be forgotten, but that everything that will be done after it will have to be different.”

[A Lark Ascending]

Interesting. I didn't know about Roussel's war service. RVW was an ambulance driver too.

Another casualty was Albéric Magnard, killed defending his home in France during the German invasion.

[soulpope]

Hindemith "Kammermusik No. 1" - Hindemith was serving as miltary musician from early 1918 onwards in Alsace,later in northern France btw Belgium and witnessed nearly unbearable horror - in early December 1918 he was dismissed from the military service.

[soulpope]

Mahler Symphony 6 "Tragic" - although finished some 10 years before the outbreak of WW1, this symphony with it`s fate motif and military rhythms colouring parts of the composition is said to stand for a premonition of the forthcoming war.

Edited May 12, 2014 by soulpope

[A Lark Ascending]

I'm not much one for premonitions; but that amazing moment in the first movement of Symph 10 where the trumpets blare out a terrifying single note accompanied by shrill strings always sounds to me like a vision of some of the general horrors of the 20thC, a glimpse into the abyss.

[soulpope]

I'm not much one for premonitions; but that amazing moment in the first movement of Symph 10 where the trumpets blare out a terrifying single note accompanied by shrill strings always sounds to me like a vision of some of the general horrors of the 20thC, a glimpse into the abyss.

well regarding the 10th backgroundwise i`m always a little preoccupied, as he worked on the orchestral draft in a situation of personal disarray based on his vanishing relationship to his wife Alma........

Edited May 12, 2014 by soulpope

[A Lark Ascending]

Yes, it's all to easy to read 'meaning' into music based on biography and contemporary historical events. Critics make a career of it.

The Rite of Spring is often portrayed as one of those premonitions but I'd have said that's a reading onto to music too. If the current Ukraine situation were to spiral out of control who knows what current music would be regarded as gathering storm music.

Another example is the many settings of A.E. Houseman poems that turn up on WWI programmes. The fact that many are about men dying young (and that at least one composer who set them died in the war) creates that association.

In a different time, Walton's First is frequently associated with the rising unease of the international situation in the 30s. Yet he denied that association completely.

I imagine in general compositions have all manner of seeds, musical and extra-musical. It's the ambiguity of music (unless given a specific title or text) that makes it so enthralling.

Edited May 13, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[A Lark Ascending]

In another field, this record references World War I:

More universal in scope and clearly linked to the contemporary Vietnam conflict (which had a huge impact on the way the Great War was perceived in the popular imagination in the late 20thC) but part of its inspiration was WWI.

Very interesting article here:

http://noglory.org/index.php/articles/81-mike-westbrook-s-marching-song-how-jazz-can-look-into-the-landscape-of-war#.U3JjZYFdWa8

[David Ayers]

Louis Vierne's Piano Quintet op. 42 is a sometimes angry lament for his son lost in the war.

Enescu's grandiose romantic Symphony No. 3 was written 1916-18 and maybe 'reflects' the war.

[David Ayers]

Nielsen's 4th and 5th are usually thought of as war symphonies.

[David Ayers]

Ivor Gurney fits the bill, notably his War Elegy.

[sidewinder]

In another field, this record references World War I:

More universal in scope and clearly linked to the contemporary Vietnam conflict (which had a huge impact on the way the Great War was perceived in the popular imagination in the late 20thC) but part of its inspiration was WWI.

Very interesting article here:

http://noglory.org/index.php/articles/81-mike-westbrook-s-marching-song-how-jazz-can-look-into-the-landscape-of-war#.U3JjZYFdWa8

and then a subsequent Westbrook LP ('Release') had a cover with a real tank on it (possibly a photo shot at Bovington Tank Museum?)

[A Lark Ascending]

From the Naxos notes:

In 1918 (Villa-Lobos) met the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who became a fervent champion of his music. This growing recognition made the premiere of part of his Symphony No 1 possible and culminated in the official commission of his ‘War triptych’, made up of Symphonies Nos 3 ‘War’, 4 ‘Victory’ and 5 ‘Peace’, in 1919. Symphony No 5, if indeed it was written in its entirety, was never performed and the score is lost.

Ironic that the one lost was 'Peace'.

More here:

http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.573151&catNum=573151&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English#

and then a subsequent Westbrook LP ('Release') had a cover with a real tank on it (possibly a photo shot at Bovington Tank Museum?)

Ah, but not a WWI tank (he says in best 'N. Giles of Tonbridge wishes to protest at the presence of a 1956 D-Class locomotive in the episode set in 1933' mode).

Edited May 13, 2014 by A Lark Ascending

[David Ayers]

I guess Schoenberg's Die Eiserne Brigade counts.

[king ubu]

Just found this:

http://www.musik.uni-osnabrueck.de/veranstaltungen/tagungen/musik_bezieht_stellung_funktionalisierung_der_musik_im_1_weltkrieg/english_version.html

Most of the articles in the book resulting from this 2012 conference are in German though:

http://www.v-r.de/de/title-0-0/musik_bezieht_stellung-1011830/

Direct link to contents:

http://www.v-r.de/pdf/titel_inhaltsverzeichnis/1011830/inhalt_978-3-8471-0206-9.pdf

And to the introduction by M. J. Grant - which is in English (following a German foreword):

http://www.v-r.de/pdf/titel_einleitung/1011830/einleitung_978-3-8471-0206-9.pdf