FROM THE ARCHIVES
This article appeared in the April 2019 issue of Fine Music Magazine.
Catherine Peake describes a moving work.
France) with mother Margaret
‘Thy life is given for freedom’s sake. / Duty done brave soldier blest / Thy battle’s fought, for thee is rest.’
So wrote Private Reginald James Godfrey in his poem ‘On a Dying Soldier’ in 1915. It was enclosed in a letter that his friend Lance Sergeant Asdruebal James Keast wrote to his mother at home in Australia. Both soldiers survived the war.
Christopher Bowen’s An Australian War Requiem was commissioned by the Sydney University Graduate Choir to commemorate the beginning of World War I in 1914 and the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. It was premiered at the Sydney Town Hall in 2014. To evoke the time and place of World War I librettist Pamela Traynor uses Godfrey’s poem, together with letters written by soldiers on the battlefield to their families back home. Scored for five soloists, choir, children’s choir and orchestra, the War Requiem also incorporates images from the war displayed on screens next to the stage.
Bowen and Traynor researched soldiers’ correspondence at the Australian War Memorial for the composition, which Bowen describes as ‘a meditation on conflict and loss, with a uniquely Australian perspective’. He adds that the piece is not just dedicated to the memory of those who died at Gallipoli or ‘on the bloody fields of Flanders and the Somme’, but also to the families of those who died.
‘Monuments with the names of fallen soldiers inscribed in stone are to be found in cities, suburbs and rural towns throughout Australia and bear testament to a hidden, less obvious tragedy suffered by those who returned and those who were touched by the death of a son, husband, father, friend or relative.’
30 January 1915, Cairo; died 25 April 1915, Gallipoli
An Australian War Requiem is divided into three tableaux, each of which depicts an aspect of war and all of which illustrate the bond between mother and son. Tableau 1: The horror of war begins with some conciliatory words sung by bass-baritone Ataturk, commander of Turkish forces at Gallipoli, consoling the mothers of sons who died there. The tableau goes on to depict the horrors of war, with the tenor in the role of soldier singing ‘every day of each year the very best of men, they lie bleeding and dying’.
Juxtaposing the ordinary with the tragic, Tableau 2: Sons and mothers is based on the letters soldiers wrote home and their families’ responses. The interplay of words between soprano and tenor epitomises the exchanges between mother and son, focusing on a central theme of the composition. A miserere (have pity) sung by children’s choir and semi-chorus intersects the tableau.
Reflecting the power of poetry in wartime Tableau 3: Reflections on loss incorporates Godfrey’s poem and includes the ‘Ode of Remembrance’, the fourth stanza of Laurence Binyon’s poem ‘For the Fallen’, which has been used in war commemoration services in Australia since 1921: ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; / Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. / At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, / We will remember them.’
Further traditional elements are incorporated, with The Last Post preceding the Ode and signalling the end of the requiem, which concludes movingly with bagpipes and percussion in the ‘Lament of the Lone Piper’.
Interspersed throughout the work are words from the Stabat Mater, the Christian hymn to Mary that portrays her suffering as the mother of Jesus during the crucifixion. Bowen has kept the text in its original Latin and says that he always intended to use the text. ‘The grief of the mother of Christ, standing at the foot of the cross, looking up at her dying son, was shared by many mothers whose sons were sacrificed on the battlefield.’ Percussion, with evocative use of the bell, reinforces the sombre tone throughout the piece.
The requiem has a long history in the annals of music composition. Traditionally, it was a Mass for the Dead in the Catholic Church, intended for the repose of the soul of one who has died and often performed at the funeral. The term ‘requiem’ was later used without a religious context and was applied to other musical compositions associated with death and dying.
By the 19th century the requiem had become a concert work in its own right, created by composers including Verdi, Berlioz and Fauré. It evolved again in the 20th century and the war requiem became known as a dedication to those killed in war. A notable example is the War Requiem of Benjamin Britten, which uses the original Latin text along with the poetry of Wilfred Owen.
The second performance of An Australian War Requiem was given on Remembrance Day, 11 November 2018, marking 100 years since the end of World War I.
The mother of Elaine Siversen, 2MBS’s former Programme Manager, lost six cousins in World War I. The photos show two of them. The names of two others are on the cenotaph.
An Australian War Requiem will be broadcast on Anzac Day, 25 April, at 2pm.