Requiems for forgotten wars

[Sean Manning]

Thanks for the links Stefanos (though I don't understand Russian).

Personally, I think the glacier is the better of the two. The truth of the second one is contradicted by Vonnegut's own writing...

But let's go back to the music. Is it justifiable to commemorate a war that has lost its direct relevance? Musically? One argument, and a good one, for doing so is that it brings people to studying that war - which gives it new relevance. Anyone else?

I guess the question here is, what defines relevance? I think there's something to be said for commemorating all those from your community who have died in war. Dead is dead, whether or not the war seems important to later generations.

War does have a dreadful fascination. But before we get too gloomy, its worth remembering that we're making progress on controlling war. Private war has been eradicated in much of the world: Greek fishermen don't indulge in piracy when they see a chance, and Oxford clerics don't settle property disputes by gathering a gang of armed friends, marching out to the property in question, and shooting at the other claimant's house. Most of Europe and the Americas are at peace with each other. And for 65 years, it has been illegal for states to conquer other states. (That has been successful enough that we tend to forget it wasn't always true). It will be a long time before states give up their right to wage war, but they may do it yet before the nukes come out again.

[M. Demetrius]

Well, for keeping humanity in war, while not a song, Kipling's "Gunga Din" pretty well gives a vignette of one particular war.

[Celer]

Yet, perhaps a case can be made for 1860-1870 as turning point

Fully agree with you here Jona, my only point being that Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture was written after the 1870's (cannon's firing at the finale etc) - war turned into musical great fun!

You just don't see this sort of thing after WWI. The music is increasingly less concerned with the glory, and more with the futility and cost. People were more aware of the risks of war, espcially now that modern technology allowed air raids and gas attacks on previously safe civilian areas. I suppose the simple nature of the First World War made it much more impersonal and mechanistic (how much glory can you have cowering in a trench under indirect artilliary bombardment?). The English point of view was especially influential - England hadn't fought a major war with major casualties for 100 years and the cost of WWI came as a shock to everyone. As a result a very powerful culture grew up after the war with writers such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon condemning the war.

There are other musical requiems that arose from this such as John Fould's War Requiem, and George Crumb's 'A Haunted Landscape' (very modernistic with the ghosts of battles past!) but most of the ones I know of are English. I would be very interested to know if there are any major works of this kind in France, Germany, Austria or Italy. Russia surprisingly doen't have any, they were too busy having another civil war and then celebrating the joys of universal socialism.

Vale,

Celer.

[Jona Lendering]

War does have a dreadful fascination. But before we get too gloomy, its worth remembering that we're making progress on controlling war.

That is true! Some time ago, perhaps five years or so, I read a review of a book about it. I thought it was a brilliant theme. One reason is, apparently, the rise of capitalist middle classes. Noblemen fight for honor, the poor fight because they have to, but the middle class just wants peace to continue its trade. (Unfortunately, the middle classes are known for their bad taste, as we can see every year in the Eurovision Song Contest; the two go hand in hand, which explains why never in history, two Eurovision Song Contest participants went to war.)

I guess the question here is, what defines relevance? I think there's something to be said for commemorating all those from your community who have died in war. Dead is dead, whether or not the war seems important to later generations.

That's the bird's eye point of view. But does a composer care? For him, WW1 may be more relevant than, say, Rome's Lusitanian Wars.

[hoplite14gr]

Russia surprisingly doen't have any, they were too busy having another civil war and then celebrating the joys of universal socialism.

Vale,

Celer.

Yes no one denies that "they were too busy having another civil war and then celebrating the joys of universal socialism"
but you think that Sostacovits "Leningrad symphony" is not a war requiem?

Kind regards

[Astiryu1]

I remember watching some documentaries on WW2 and the effects of photos from Time/Life from the battlefields in Europe. There was a great outcry when the first photos were published. Seeing the horrors of war without even being there was finally possible. That greatly changed the popular opinion of warfare in the states. Before Pearl Harbor popular opinion was to not get involved except for aid to Allies (namely England). After the US was in it there were lines at the recruiting stations. Then D-Day happened and the photos broke. After the war photos showed all of the harsh realities and things like the Bombing of London was not just news anymore. The devastation was seen by the world not just combatants and the people living there. There hasn't been such a war since; the Countries finally started working together to achieve a relative peace. The groups of N.A.T.O. and the E.U. were established in the aftermath and have so far worked. Anymore there isn't much to sing about with war except for loss and devastation. Everyone can see with their own eyes what is real. That alone is not conducive to writing a "happy" song about war.

[john m roberts]

This thread has wandered far afield, but I'll chime in anyway. There is evidence that the western world has made progress away from war, but it also seemed so in the post-Napoleonic pre-WWI century from 1815-1914. In fact, European powers fought many wars in that period, they just didn't fight them on a big scale in Europe. They fought small wars far away, mostly in Asia and Africa. There have been plenty of wars since WWII, many of them with Euro-American involvement, but they've been fought in places like Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine just to name a few. Predicting an end to war has a long history both of failure and of inaccuracy. In 1900 any European, if asked whether a major war between European nations was likely, would have said that it was unlikely, but if such a war came, it would certainly be between France and Britain. Unfortunately, the cost of war becomes a factor only during and after the war. In the days leading up to one it is always conveniently forgotten.

[Sean Manning]

This thread has wandered far afield, but I'll chime in anyway. There is evidence that the western world has made progress away from war, but it also seemed so in the post-Napoleonic pre-WWI century from 1815-1914. In fact, European powers fought many wars in that period, they just didn't fight them on a big scale in Europe.

But between 1854 and 1871, there were a series of bloody wars involving all of the European powers at least once (Crimean, Austro-Sicilian, Austro-Prussian, Franco-Prussian). Each involved tens of thousands of dead and altered the international pecking order, so while they weren't on the scale of the Seven Years' War they were still major wars. There was another string of wars among small powers as the European half of the Ottoman empire broke up, and on the fringes of the great powers around 1900 (the Boer War, Spanish-American War, and Russo-Japanese War plus a few scares like Fashoda). So the recent peace in Europe and the Americas is still unusual ... the question being whether that's just luck or reflects structural changes. Its an interesting question, but you're right that trying to falsify either theory is probably beyond the scope of a thread on music