November 19th and 20th - Remembrance 2

Further to last week's edition of Classical Break Music for Remembrance Day, here is another selection of music of remembrance, with works by Bernard Herrmann, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Copland, Delius, Finzi, Gurney, Bliss and Walton, two hymns - Eternal Father, Strong To Save and Crimond and the Last Post.  It opens with an orchestral piece, For The Fallen, which evokes the atmosphere of the large Allied war-cemeteries in France and the Low Countries. 

Other highlights are a Letter From Home, a Spring Offensive (an orchestrally-accompanied reading of the poem by Wilfred Owen) and a Battle In The Air.

There's also a new poem about the return from war, by Mike Burrows, Classical Break writer and producer.

SCRIPT

Classical Break -  Remembrance Plus

Intro:  For The Fallen, Herrmann (6.19 min)

This is Classical Break on Somer

Valley FM, and I’m Rupert

Kirkham.  This programme was researched and written by

Mike Burrows. There’s so much music based around the horrendous effects of war,

that we've decided to do an additional Classical Break

of English and American remembrance-music this week –

a sort of Remembrance Plus. 

We have just heard For The

Fallen, by Bernard Herrmann, an evocation

of the sunlit spaces of Western

Europe’s War Cemeteries.

Let’s hear the Prelude to the

1940 film The Forty-ninth

Parallel, by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Track Two:  The Forty-ninth Parallel, Vaughan Williams (2.33 min)

This is Classical Break on Somer

Valley FM.  Today we're playing more Remembrance music.

Sir William Walton wrote music for

the film The Battle of Britain

(1968); much of it

was discarded by the director, but

not the eidetic cue, Battle In

The Air.

Track Three:  Battle In The Air, Walton (4.50 min)

And now, Letter From Home, a

short orchestral idyll written for Paul

Whiteman in 1943 by Aaron Copland.

Track Four:  Letter From Home, Copland (7.20 min)

Now here's a new poem from Mike Burrows.

Frederick Delius (1862-1934) wrote a secular Requiem

during the First World War, which,

as an expatriate Englishman with German

blood and resident in France, was

a time of great bitterness for him. 

Here is the fourth movement,

I Honour The Man Who Can

Love Life.

Track Five:  Requiem, 4th move, Delius (4.16 min)

Next, a setting of Thomas Hardy’s

First World War poem, In The

Time of The Breaking Of Nations,

made by Gerald Finzi in his

Requiem Da Camera of 1924.

Track Six:  Requiem Da Camera, 111, Con Dignita  Finzi (3.57 min)

Here is a brief song by

the soldier-musician and poet Ivor

Gurney (1890-1937),

The Cherry Trees:  it is a

tiny elegy founded on a poem

by  Edward Thomas, who died at

Arras at Easter on the first

day of the Third Battle of

Ypres, in 1917.

Track Seven:  The Cherry Trees, Gurney (1.07 min)

A melodrama from Sir Arthur Bliss’

Symphony, Morning Heroes of 1928: 

Spring Offensive - illustrating the poem

by Wilfred Owen.  Bliss was wounded

but survived the Great War, his

brother Kennard did not.  The symphony

was dedicated to him and to

those of Bliss’ comrades who had

died.  It was written after a

series of worsening nightmares, and proved

cathartic.

Track Eight:  Morning Heroes, Spring Offensive, Bliss (5.59 min)

A hymn for the Senior Service now:  Eternal Father Strong To Save.

Track Nine:  Eternal Father Strong To Save (1.07 min).

Now, a work for choral and

orchestral forces, Ode To Death, a

tribute to fallen musicians by Gustav  Holst

(1874-1934), dating from 1919 and

setting Walt Whitman's “When lilacs last

in the door-yard bloomed.”

Track Ten:  Ode To Death, Holst (12.27 min)

You've been listening to Classical Break on Somer

Valley FM with Rupert Kirkham.

Thanks go to Mike Burrows for

researching and scripting this programme.  We hope you

will join us again soon.  Our last

piece today is Crimond and Last Post.  Goodbye!

Track Eleven:  Crimond and Last Post.(2.44)

Homes For Heroes (read by Mike Burrows)
They march towards me, in fours of all hope
To now, crumpled and muddy, their helmets
Dipped or level-brimmed, their rifles a-slope
On pack-blistered shoulders, and bayonets
Hanging in scabbard: they swing the free arm,
Their spare figures upright to the pale neck,
Some with undone collars. They swing by farm
And up streets, and the push goes without check.
No snipers, no mortars, no machine-guns -
No booby-traps. They will take the country.
God knows, they did not expect it - it stuns
So that they do not ask how silently
They sing, tread or banter - or how the land
Ignores them. They will never understand.