| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The First World War involved composers just as it involved writers. We rarely hear, however, about the classical music that was written during the war, or after it, while for generations now the war has been remembered through the literature of the war poets and the memoirs of the late 1920s (Vera Brittain's Testament of youth, or Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an infantry officer, for instance). This article aims to put composers alongside their literary counterparts, to present a fuller picture of cultural responses to the conflict. It looks at works by Edward Elgar, Ivor Gurney, Herbert Howells, Patrick Hadley, Gerald Finzi, John Foulds, Frank Bridge and in particular at Arthur Bliss's symphony on war, Morning heroes. It charts the changing responses of music to the war from the first patriotic statements to the requiems of the postwar years. It looks at compositions by civilians, and by composers who served abroad, to examine how classical music is uniquely placed to commemorate, inspire and mourn.
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