Music and the First World War
2014 marks 100 years since the outbreak of World War One in the summer of 1914. This selection includes orchestral music associated with the war.
George Butterworth was a promising composer who fought in the First World War, but was tragically killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. His orchestral idylls A Shropshire Lad (Rhapsody for Orchestra) and On the Banks of Green Willow were written just before the war and are Butterworth's two most famous works.
Gerald Finzi's Requiem da Camera, now published with a new completion, was written in memory of Finzi’s composition teacher, Ernest Farrar, who was killed during active service in 1918. It is a reflective and poignant work particularly suitable for performances commemorating the tragedy of World War I.
Herbert Howells's Elegy is an early piece, composed as a personal tribute to a fellow student at the Royal College of Music killed in the First World War. Elegy is a prescient early pointer towards Howells’s later memorial works.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was too old to fight in the war but nevertheless served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, suffering a loss of hearing in later life as a result of his wartime experience. A Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 3) was premièred in 1922. The bugle sounds of wartime are echoed in the trumpet cadenza, whilst the final soprano solo is an affective and enigmatic ending to this distinctive work.
Edward Elgar's symphonic prelude Polonia was written in 1915 as a tribute to the Polish people. It can be used as an orchestral counterpart to his poignant setting of Laurence Binyon's poem 'For The Fallen', We Will Remember Them.
Further repertoire exploring the wider themes of war and peace can be explored with audio clips at www.boosey.com/warandpeace.
