1918 – 2018GURT LUSH CHOIR AND BRISTOL MAN CHORUS

PRESENT A MUSICAL TOUR TO COMMEMORATE THE CENTENARY OF THE END OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

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This November marks the centenary of the signing of the Armistice that sealed the end of the First World War. Throughout 2018, events are being held across Britain, Europe and many other countries to commemorate this most deadly of global conflicts.

Tonight, Gurt Lush Choir and Bristol Man Chorus perform their tribute – FOOTNOTES TO THE GREAT WAR. This collection has been curated by our musical director Sam Burns. Despite the variety of material, Sam is the first to recognise its limitations – the war was by its nature a global event and to attempt to represent every experience would be to reduce our tribute to lip service.

Instead Sam takes us through a highly personal musical journey exploring the attitudes, hopes and fears of many British people, soldier and civilian.

FOOTNOTES mirrors Britain’s journey from flag-waving hysteria to numb, sleepwalking disillusionment. It’s a tableau of contrasts – social classes bound by hierarchy but often sharing the same fate in battle; the different war of men and women; the muddy stench of trench warfare and reveries of lush English countryside in gentler times; terror, longing, hope, despair – and the ultimate calamity of a lost generation.

Through these songs, we remember them.

Please note: The majority of the images shown are out of copyright and in the public domain due to their age. Where this is uncertain or there is still copyright, credit is given.

FOOTNOTES TO THE GREAT WAR

Collecting and selecting the songs that make up this suite (from hundreds of potential candidates) took place over several years.

In researching each song, I stumbled over many fascinating facts and anecdotes about the war. There was space to include but a few.

Furthermore, nearly every detail or fact about the war is disputed by someone. I have done a lot of research and weighed my words carefully, but it’s a vast subject full of contention.

The summaries for each song are simply my own. Apologies for any errors. If in doubt, research further and form your own opinions!

Sam Burns

INTRODUCTION BY SAM BURNS

PROGRAMME WITH INTERVAL

I’ll Make a Man of You Arthur Wimperis/Herman Finck Arr. GurtLush

Send Me Away with a Smile Al Piantodos/Louis Weslyn Arr. SATB Bristol MAN Chorus

Bravo Bristol Ivor Novello/Fred Weatherly Arr. SATB GurtLush

Standing in Line Lester Simpson, Coope, Boyes & Simpson

The Lads in their Hundreds A.E. Housman (from ‘A Shropshire Lad’)Set for solo voice and piano by George Butterworth. Arr. SATB GurtLush

Down Upon the Dugout Floor Jim Boyes, Coope, Boyes & Simpson

Silent Night/Stille Nacht Franz Gruber, Arr. GurtLush/ Bristol MAN Chorus

Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire Infantry of WWI

In Flanders Fields Poem by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, set by Eleanor Daley

Hill 60 Jim Boyes, Coope Boyes & Simpson

Interval

The Rose of No-Man’s Land Jack Caddigan/James A. Brennan Arr. SATB GurtLush

Do You Want us toLose the War? Robert Weston/Burt Lee Arr. Coope, Boyes & Simpson

Margaritae Sorori Poem by W.E. Henley, set by Ernest Farrar

The Show Poem by Wilfred Owen, set to music especially for these performances by Phil Dixon (2018)

The Pankhurst Anthem Helen and Lucy Pankhurst Commissioned by the BBC for 2018

Tyne Cot at Night Jim Boyes, Coope, Boyes & Simpson

I Want to go Home Sung by infantry from the Boer war onwards

We’re here because we’re here Infantry of WWI to the tune of Auld Lang Syne

Minute silenceThere will be a minute silence before the commencement of the final song

We Will Remember Them Words from ‘For the Fallen’ by Laurence Binyon. Music from ‘With Proud Thanksgiving’, Edward Elgar

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I’ll Make a Man of YouArthur Wimperis/Herman Finck, Arr. GurtLush

In 1914 national radio didn’t exist, and gramophones were largely for the wealthy, so hits from the music hall – the era’s beating heart of popular culture – were the main recruiting tool, making ruthless capital out of publicly shaming young men and boys. Meanwhile the middle classes, who probably wouldn’t visit music halls themselves, would buy the same hits by the thousand in sheet music form, and enjoy them around Britain’s three million pianos.

Unlike during the Second World War – when the CIA secretly ran a record label, and the involved powers embraced the potential of popular culture – this sort of propaganda was not centrally coordinated but driven by commercial pressure to please audiences. In 1914 patriotism sold. When stories of the war started to come back with the wounded, the recruitment songs vanished as quickly as they’d begun, but not before over a million men had volunteered. Sexual bribery and innuendo characterised many of the songs written for women to sing.

This example, made famous in the musical Oh! What a Lovely War! is a chilling example. Its exploitative subtext makes it uncomfortable to sing, especially with the passion it demands. But it was not for us to dodge the brutality behind the shtick, one shamelessly brandished to beat young men into chasing giddy adventures promising sex and glory.

Lord Kitchener is asking for an army, so now’s the time for you to show your grit.And I’ve got a perfect dreamOf a new recruiting schemeWhich I really think is absolutely itIf only other girls would do as I doI believe that we could manage it aloneFor I turn all suitors from meBut the sailor or the TommyI’ve an army and a navy of my own.

Chorus:

On Sunday I walk out with a soldierOn Monday I’m taken by a TarOn Tuesday I’m out with a baby Boy ScoutOn Wednesday a HussarOn Thursday I gang oot wi’ a ScottieOn Friday the captain of the crewBut on Saturday I’m willingIf you’ll only take the shillingTo make a man of any one of you.

I teach the tender-foot to face the powderThat adds an added lustre to my skinAnd I show the raw recruitHow to give a chaste saluteSo when I’m presenting arms he’s falling inIt makes you almost proud to be a womanWhen you make a strapping soldier of a kidAnd he says ‘You put me through itAnd I didn’t want to do it,But you went and made me love you, so I did.’

Chorus:

On Sunday I walk out with a bosunOn Monday a rifleman in greenOn Tuesday I choose a sub in the BluesOn Wednesday a MarineOn Thursday a Terrier from TootingOn Friday a Midshipman or twoBut on Saturday I’m willingIf you’ll only take the shillingTo make a man of any one of you.

By 1917 patriotic recruiting songs were thoroughly out of fashion in England, but in North America, the war was still exciting.

The US had done rather well out of the war up till then – the much-quoted statistic that over 25,000 Americans became millionaires during WW1 (by selling to both sides) is impossible to prove, but what is certain is that by the end of the war the USA was the world’s greatest economic power – and most of Europe owed them money.

Little girl, don’t cry, I must say goodbye,Don’t you hear the bugle call?And the fife and drum Beats a fair old tum,Where the flag waves o’er our all.Though I love you so, It is time to goAnd the soldier in me, you’ll find,When on land or sea, Many boys like me;You would not have me stay behind!

So, Send me away with a smile, little girl,Brush the tears from eyes of brown.It’s all for the best And I’m off with the restOf the boys from my own home town.It may be forever we part, little girl,But it may be for only a while.But if fight here we must,Then on God is our trust,So send me away with a smile!

When I leave you, dear, Give me words of cheerTo recall in times of pain.They will comfort me and will seem to beLike the sunshine after rain.And mid shot and shell, I’ll remember wellYou’ve a heart of a soldier too,And that through this war I am fighting forMy country and my home and you!

So, Send me away with a smile, little girl..... etc

May 1915 poster by E. J. Kealey, from the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee

Maggie Smith in Oh! What a Lovely War, ©Paramount Pictures (1969)

Send Me Away with a SmileAl Piantodos/Louis Weslyn Arr. SATB Bristol MAN Chorus

Bringing the boys home – Troop ship USS Agamemnon arriving at Boston in 1919. She was formerly the SS Kaiser Wilhelm II but was seized following the outbreak of hostilities by the United States.

Brooklyn’s drafted men leaving Long Island Railroad terminal on Flatbush Avenue, in September of 1917

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A young and then unknown Ivor Novello wrote this merely months before Keep the Home Fires Burning launched his career permanently. Presumably he was thrilled to work with Bristol lyricist Fred Weatherly, already famous for Danny Boy and many other hits. However, this song, written to celebrate the creation of Bristol’s own volunteer regiment, swiftly sank without trace. Not long after the war all copies were thought to be lost and it was never recorded.

Happily though, an old scruffy copy was discovered in Bristol Records Office in 2011 and is now safe in Bristol Museum. The regiment was not so lucky. Of the 1300 volunteers 765 were killed and only 535 returned, presumably most of them wounded.

While Weatherly’s triumphalist lyrics may sound appalling to modern ears as do all the recruiting songs, equally uncomfortable is the romantic imagery of the conflict he evokes. ’Who wrecks on the sword and flame?’ somehow suggests playing pirates rather than storming a machine gun nest.

When the stalwart merchant venturers, set out in days of old,they sailed with a Bristol blessing to find a land of gold.And now there’s a grimmer journey, there’s a sterner call today.But the men of Bristol answer in the good old Bristol way.

It’s a rough long road we’re going.It’s a tough long job to do.But as sure as the wind is blowing, we mean to see it through.Who cares how the guns may thunder?Who wrecks on the sword and flame?We fight for the sake of England,and the honour of Bristol’s name.

O Men and boys of Bristol, ye swarm from far and wide.The rich man and the poor man, thank God are side by side.March on, our hearts go with you, we know what you will do.The spirit of your Fathers, is alive today in you.

Bravo BristolIvor Novello/Fred Weatherly Arr. SATB GurtLush

It’s a rough long road you’re going.It’s a tough long job to do.But as sure as the wind is blowing, we know you’ll see it through.Who cares how the guns may thunder?Who wrecks on the sword and flame?You fight for the sake of England, and the honour of Bristol’s name.

And when the sea’s are free again, and the bloody fields are won,We’ll tell our Bristol children what Bristol men have done.Their deeds shall ring forever, from Avon to the sea.And the sound of the march of the Bristol men, the song of their sons shall be.

T’was a rough, long road to travel.T’was a tough long job to do.But, please God, they meant to do it, and by God they’ve done it too.The cost? Who stopped to count it?They knew and played the game.They fought for the Empire’s honour.And the glory of Bristol’s name.

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The 12th Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment marching on North Street, Bedminster 1914-15

D Company, 12th Gloucestershire Regiment 1916

Bristol’s Own: 12th Gloucestershire Regiment – the boys in their barracks

Men from the Black Watch Regiment leaving Bristol for the front, April 1915

Standing in LineLester Simpson, Coope, Boyes & Simpson

This legendary vocal trio have done extraordinary work documenting and commemorating WW1, and our programme owes them a great debt. This song was inspired by Lester Simpson’s memories of his great aunt Annie, widowed in 1917. After her husband, Albert, was killed at the battle of Passchendaele, she lived alone in a house of ‘half-empty washing lines’.

Puttees and polish, a cigarette and a smileA sepia soldier, no more than a childYou roared ‘Tipperary’ down to the trainBut in Flanders the guns sang a different refrain

Standing in line, waiting to signStanding in line to go overAnd a half-empty washing-line serves to remindThat you’re fallen and always standing in line

Misinformation, a well-hidden lieRoll up, try your luck on the coconut shyWhite feathers or glory, while government hacksAre busy newspapering over the cracksStanding in line... etc

But only the swallows and your postcards came homeTo the long summer days and the corn newly grownAs certain as Empire you marched off to warWhere fear-choked and rum-soaked, they taughtyou to ploughStanding in line... etc

You fought and you died in the mud and the rainA mile into hell and a mile back againA pawn in their game, not fallen but pushedAnd a Portland stone bonnet foreverStanding in line... etc

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The Lads in their HundredsA.E. Housman (from ‘A Shropshire Lad’) Set for solo voice and piano by George Butterworth Arr. SATB GurtLush

Housman was not actually writing about WW1 here, the poem is from the 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad.

But, largely due to its haunting setting and Butterworth’s subsequent death in action, it has become synonymous with doomed youth, WW1 and the battle of the Somme in particular. Butterworth left little music behind. He destroyed many works before going to the war, fearing he should not return and have the chance to revise them.

Five weeks into the battle of the Somme, Butterworth was shot through the head by a sniper. His body was hastily buried by his men in the side of the trench and never recovered for formal reburial. When his brigade commander wrote to Butterworth’s father to inform him of his death, it transpired that he had not known that his son had been awarded the Military Cross. Similarly, the brigadier was astonished to learn that Butterworth had been one of the most promising English composers of his generation.

The initial attack at the Somme involved 110,000 men. By the end of the first day, 20,000 lay dead between the lines and 38,000 were wounded or missing. Six months later the total deaths (on both sides) are estimated at 1.6 million.

The Allies had advanced less than ten miles.

Down Upon the Dugout FloorJim Boyes, Coope, Boyes & Simpson

Battered down to the ground.Down upon the dugout floor.Hear the whine crease the spine.Take me to that other shore.For I’m here in No-Man’s-Land,And the world has turned to sand.Down upon the dugout floor.

Young in years, old in fears.Down upon the dugout floor.Trapped in time, between the lines.Take me to that other shore.For I’m here in No-Man’s-Land...etc

Oh can’t you hear the mournful cry?We cannot do but only die.And here we sit and wonder why.You and I.

Battered down to the ground.Down upon the dugout floor.Hear the whine crease the spine.Take me to that other shore.For I’m here in No-Man’s-Land...etc

My soul can never return home.On air or land or sea or foam.Condemned forever to roam,Lost and alone.

Please don’t go. I need to know.Down upon the dugout floor.If part of me has set you free.Take me to that other shore.For I’m here in No-Man’s-Land...etc

The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair,There’s men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.

There’s chaps from the town and the field and the till and the cart,And many to count are the stalwart, and many the brave,And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart,And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave.

I wish one could know them, I wish there were tokens to tellThe fortunate fellows that now you can never discern;And then one could talk with them friendly and wish them farewellAnd watch them depart on the way that they will not return.

But now you may stare as you like and there’s nothing to scan;And brushing your elbow unguessed at and not to be toldThey carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

The map shows trenches during the Battle of the Hohenzollern Redoubt at a time when the British had advanced into German lines, 1915.

Source: from the personal archives of Sir Charles Geoffrey Vickers VC.

Soldiers of an Australian 4th Division field artillery brigade on a duckboard track passing through Chateau Wood, near Hooge in the Ypres salient, 29 October 1917. The men belong to a battery of the 10th Field Artillery Brigade. Australian War Memorial collection number E01220.

George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC 12 July 1885 – 5 August 1916

Infantry with small box respirators,Ypres 1917.

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In Flanders FieldsPoem by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, set by Eleanor Daley

McCrae fought in the Second Battle of Ypres. In a letter written to his mother, McCrae described the battle as a nightmare, “For seventeen days and seventeen nights none of us have had our clothes off, nor our boots even, except occasionally. In all that time while I was awake, gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds…

…And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give way.”

Alexis Helmer, a close friend, was killed during the battle. McCrae performed the burial service himself, at which time he noted how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died at Ypres. The next day, he composed the poem while sitting in the back of an ambulance.

In 1918, exhausted from years of war, McCrae contracted pneumonia and later cerebral meningitis. He died at the military hospital in Wimereux and was buried there with full military honours. As with many of the popular works of the First World War, this poem was written early in the conflict, before the romanticism of war turned to bitterness and disillusion for soldiers and civilians alike.

Silent Night/ Stille NachtFranz Gruber, Arr. GurtLush/ Bristol MAN Chorus

While the iconic ceasefire of the first Christmas truce, complete with football in No Man’s Land, was never repeated on such a scale again, there were multiple other examples of temporary pauses or ‘going easy’ throughout the war, including exchanges of goods and pleasantries, despite the dire threats of higher ranking officers.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow;Between the crosses, row on rowThat mark our place; and in the skyThe larks still bravely singing fly,Scarce heard amidst the guns below.We are the dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lieIn Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:To you from falling hands we throw,The torch; be yours to hold it highIf ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

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Left: This is a list of humorous orders, in the style of a military memo, for the fictitious “Royal Standbacks.” Ironic humour provided a safe outlet for front line soldiers to poke fun at and express contempt for military life. George Metcalf Archival Collection

Speaking out against the war in any way was treason and punishable by execution by firing squad.

So the multitude of soldier’s songs, always at least sarcastic and often so filthy or inflammatory that most historians didn’t record them, must have also had an important role in allowing disillusioned troops to vent steam. This is one of the most famous examples.

If you want to find the Sergeant, I know where he is.I know where he is, I know where he is.If you want to find the Sergeant, I know where he is.He’s scrounging round the cookhouse door.

I saw him, I saw him. Scrounging round the cookhouse door,I saw him scrounging round the cookhouse door.

The Major… …Drinking all the company rum.

The General… …Pinning another medal to his chest

The Private… …Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire

Numerous other verses existed, many of them much smuttier!

Hanging on the Old Barbed WireInfantry of WWI

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Hill 60Jim Boyes, Coope Boyes & Simpson

Despite being essentially a small pile of spoil from the digging of the nearby railway, merely 40m higher than the surrounding land, Hill 60 was considered tactically significant and was lost and won many times over the course of the war. Both sides used gas in the battles.

The Hill was finally won for the Allies in 1917, after they exploded nearly half a million tons of TNT planted in tunnels under it. It has been claimed that 10,000 Germans died in the blast and that the explosion was heard in both Paris and London. Today Hill 60 stands just 4m high.

We mourn for you, whose peace may never come,Who never more will see a harvest home,Who never more will witness a new birth,Whose bodies, vapourised, ne’er fell to earth,Or decomposed in hideous stinking pools,Or buried deep below with miners tools.

We stand on high, where sheep may safely graze.We come to honour meditate or praise,Or empathise, but we can’t understandA conflict on a scale so grand,That mortal tongue can only glibly tellThat this is what we made a living hell.

A pilgrimage to where our fathers fought,A history class that never can be taughtOf gas and guns and spades and hands and teeth,A subtle knowledge of what lies beneath,A subterranean honeycomb of fear.A pock-marked surface of another year.

We see the glint of Zillebeke lakeAnd in the distance there is no mistake,The recreation of a city’s dreams,The golden statues in the twilight gleam.But to the echo of a distant gun,Behind the ruined cloth all sinks a blood red sun.

We mourn for you, whose peace may never come... etc

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Right: Sappers and miners at work on a tunnel under Hill 60, overlooking the Ypres salient, blown up April 1915. Tunneling and mining operations were used to attack enemy positions by tunneling underneath them and then destroying them with explosive mines. Image courtesy MOD archives

Below right: A soldier standing in a huge crater near Hill 60 Image courtesy of Australian War Memorial

Australian government recruiting poster drew on their soldiers’ success at Hill 60. Image courtesy of Australian War Memorial

The Rose of No-Man’s LandJack Caddigan/James A. Brennan Arr. SATB GurtLush

The image of the WW1 nurse in her pristinely starched virgin-white uniform is well known, and the traditional feminine values associated with nursing made this a reassuring and non-threatening symbol of women’s contribution to the war effort.

Of course the reality was horribly different. At first the army only accepted single women over 25 from upwardly mobile backgrounds. Sheer weight of casualties soon forced them to accept more or less anyone willing. Living and working conditions were often much the same as the trenches. Without antibiotics, infection was everywhere.

Less idealised were the ‘Canary girls’, (women working in explosives factories, so named because the TNT dyed their skin yellow). Almost all suffered from toxic jaundice – even their babies were born yellow. Hundreds died from poisoning and hundreds more in accidental explosions.

They worked shifts of up to 12 hours with minimal breaks, paid half the wages of men doing the same jobs. Such inequality was typical for all the 2 million women that took on traditionally male roles over the course of the war.

I’ve seen some beautiful flowers,Grow in life’s garden fair,I’ve spent some wonderful hours,Lost in their fragrance rare;But I have found another,Wondrous beyond compare.

There’s a rose that grows on “No Man’s Land”And it’s wonderful to see,Tho’ its spray’d with tears, it will live for years,In my garden of memory.

It’s the one red rose the soldier knows,It’s the work of the Master’s hand;Mid the War’s great curse, Stands the Red Cross Nurse,She’s the rose of “No Man’s Land”.

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A lady went to the butcher’s shop for ‘alf a pound of meat.The butcher carved her off a slice that wasn’t very sweet.She sniffed at it and said, “Oh dear, is that the best you’ve got?It smells too high for me to buy”, the butcher shouted, “What?

Do you want us to lose the war? (x2)It’s not very tasty I’ll freely admit,But you’ve got to ‘ave it and put up with it.You can’t stop that old cow from doing its bit.Do you want us to lose the war?”

Oh, Brown sat in the Rose and Crown and talked about the war.He dipped his finger in ‘is beer and then began to draw.Said he, “Now here’s the British lines and here’s the German foe.”Then the potman shouted “Time!”, and Brown said, “’Alf a mo’!

Do you want us to lose the war? (x2)I’d mapped it all out we were certain to win,Then you shouted out “Time!” and I think it’s a sin.With another ‘alf pint we’d ‘ave been in Berlin.Do you want us to lose the war?”

A patriotic lady known as saucy Missus White,She organised a concert for the wounded lads one night.She whispered to ‘er ‘usband, “George, I’m going to try to sing,To cheer the lads up a bit.” Said he, “God save the King!”

Do you want us to lose the war? (x2)To those convalescents who shivered in dread,She warbled, “Oh, tuck me in my little bed”,“We’ve got to get back to the front line”, they said,“Do you want us to lose the war?”

Margaritae SororiPoem by W.E. Henley Set by Ernest Farrar

Charles Stanford (distinguished composer and teacher of Holst and Vaughan Williams), wrote of Farrar, “He was one of my most loyal and devoted pupils. He was very shy, but full of poetry, and I always thought very high things of him as a composer and lamented his loss both personally and artistically.”

Stanford personally attempted to bring his pupil’s music to wider attention and many organ and vocal works were published posthumously during the 1920s, However, following Stanford’s death, Farrar’s music saw a decline in popularity, with the composer’s Edwardian idiom out of place in a post-war music scene. Many of his scores are now lost.

He was killed by machine gun fire in 1918. He had been at the front for just two days.

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies: And from the west, Where the sun, his day’s work ended, Lingers as in content, There falls on the old, gray city An influence luminous and serene, A shining peace.

The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Shine and are changed. In the valley Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night-- Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing! My task accomplish’d and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gather’d to the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.

Do You Want us to Lose the War?Robert Weston/Burt Lee Arr. Coope Boyes & Simpson (Found in a piano stool in Poperinge, Belgium).

Contrary to popular misconception, songs that actively mocked the war were abundant and popular from late 1915 onwards. Generally, most of the press submitted willingly to voluntary self-censorship. Pop culture didn’t.

Cartoons by by famed British soldier and artist Capt. Bruce Bairnsfather for the ‘Bystander’s’ Fragments from France. His cartoons of trench life proved extremely popular among Allied soldiers.

Ruined Country: Old Battlefield, Vimy, near La Folie Wood. By Paul Nash, 1918

Inset images above: courtesy of Bristol City Archives

Corporal: What will you do after the war if you can’t get your old job back? Private: Marry the girl who’s holding it down.

Suffragette Charlotte Despard speaking to a crowd in Trafalgar Square, London (Press Association)

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The ShowPoem by Wilfred Owen,set to music especially for these performances by Phil Dixon (2018)

This poem is unusually allegorical compared to Owen’s more graphic work. The composer comments:

“ I was given a book of World War One poetry and began the process of finding a poem I thought could be set to music. This proved harder than I imagined as much of the poetry was quite wretched and gloomy, until I came across The Show. It was unique as it had a lot of dreamlike imagery.

I began by deciding on my make up for the choir. I wanted it to be quite bass/baritone heavy and as such split basses and tenors into three groups. These three groups interplay the opening theme, which reoccurs throughout the piece in various forms and by different groups. I wanted to create large washes of harmonic colour to create the dreamlike mood the poem demanded, so at various stages, singers are required to hold notes that are actually far too long. This should be imperceptible to an audience as singers will take a breath at different moments.

In addition there’s not much lyrical rhythm in Wilfred Owen’s words and this is reflected by the lumbering, often repeating musical rhythms.”

A good friend once described Phil Dixon as ‘an uncompromising voice’. I now understand what he meant. As musical director I was a little unnerved by my first sight of the manuscript. Not only were there three bass and three tenor parts, which is a challenge to any choir, but the text, despite being ‘dreamlike’, is nonetheless stomach-churningly dark. Dixon’s setting accentuates that darkness with the aforementioned lumbering/cycling rhythms almost evoking some ‘foul march of the damned’.... ...Honestly, I didn’t expect the singers to receive it with much enthusiasm.

Happily though, from the very first rehearsal we found that within the horror, the piece also possesses great beauty. The choir’s determination to do it justice, despite the obvious trauma incurred by working intimately with such a text, has impressed and moved me deeply. I can honestly say that I’ve never conducted anything else like it and that we’ve all greatly enjoyed the challenge.

Owen enlisted in 1915. Initially he held his troops in contempt for their loutish behaviour and described his company as ’expressionless lumps‘. However, he was to change dramatically after a number of traumatic experiences. He suffered concussion after falling into a shell hole and was also blown up by a trench mortar, spending several days unconscious among the remains of one of his fellow officers.

Suffering from shell shock, he was sent to Edinburgh for treatment. Whilst recuperating, he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Owen returned to active service in France in July 1918. His decision to return was probably in response to Sassoon being sent back to England, after he was shot in the head in an apparent ‘friendly fire’ incident. Owen saw it as his duty to add his voice to that of Sassoon, so that the horrific realities of the war might continue to be told. Sassoon was violently opposed to the idea of Owen returning to the trenches, threatening to ’stab him in the leg’ if he tried it. Aware of his attitude, Owen did not inform him of his action until he was once again in France. At the very end of August 1918, Owen returned to the front line. For his courage and leadership, he was awarded the Military Cross.

He was killed in action on 4 November 1918, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells in Shrewsbury were ringing out in celebration.

Even on the very last day of the war there were 10,944 casualties, including 2,738 deaths. Overall, the Allies lost about 6 million soldiers and the Central Powers about 4 million. Effectively they ‘won’ because they were still willing to sacrifice more.

The Pankhurst AnthemHelen and Lucy Pankhurst Commissioned by the BBC for 2018

By 1914, there were more than 50 suffrage societies across the UK. Once war was declared, militancy and violent direct action was brought to a halt, but suffragists continued to campaign peacefully for votes for women throughout the war years. Women workers and volunteers became visible in public space, as they took over men’s roles in every aspect of public and work life. Suffragist women were present and active on the Western and Eastern fronts in a huge variety of roles, including doctors, nurses, drivers, mechanics and administrators.

In 1918, property owning women over 30 were granted the right to vote, via the Representation of the People Act. In 1928 this was extended to all women over 21, finally on equal terms with men. (It is likely that most of the men serving at the front would not have had the right to vote either, as it was limited to property-owners over 21)

It is often suggested that women were finally granted limited voting rights because they had ‘proved themselves’ over the war years by taking on men’s jobs. Or perhaps the establishment simply brought in compromise legislation to avoid eventually losing the fight with the suffragettes, knowing that they would resume their campaign after the war.

I hear the sound of feet perpetually beating,The pounding of our hearts as we march on through the streets.A sisterhood of sacrifices made along the way,But now we stand today.

If we win this hardest of fights, to be sure the future will be made easierFor women all over the world to win the fight when their time comes.Our own path, the right to live. To tell our story with what we have to give.So, listen, tho’ you may feel alone This is the sound of those that follow you.

I hear the sound of feet perpetually beating,The pounding of our hearts as we march on through the streets.A sisterhood of sacrifices made along the way,But now we stand! We sing! We rise! Today!

My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,As unremembering how I rose or why,And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,And pitted with great pocks and scabs of plagues.Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugsOf ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.By them had slimy paths been trailed and scrapedRound myriad warts that might be little hills.

From gloom’s last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,

And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.(And smell came up from those foul openingsAs out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,Brown strings towards strings of grey, with bristling spines,All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.Those that were grey, of more abundant spawns,Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten,I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.

And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hidIts bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.

A page from Owen’s original manuscript. © The British Library & The Wilfred Owen Literary Estate, image via The First World War Poetry Digital Archive, University of Oxford

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, MC 18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918

Female munitions workers during the First World War, at the Whitehall Iron Works of Strachan & Henshaw Ltd, 3 October 1917

Lady ‘clippy’ at Ashton Road, on the Bedminster and Bristol Bridge tram

Conscientious objectors at a protest on Dartmoor in 1917

1918

We Will Remember ThemWords from ‘For the Fallen’ by Laurence Binyon Music from ‘With Proud Thanksgiving’, Edward Elgar

A tiny snippet of an epic poem and equally epic musical setting.

We will remember them. We will remember them.At the going down of the sun, or in the morning.We will remember them. We will remember them.They shall not grow old, as we that at left grow old.Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.At the going down of the sun, or in the morning.We will remember them. We will remember them.

We’re here because we’re hereInfantry of WWI to the tune of Auld Lang Syne

Free of all conceit and pretension, perhaps these five words make the most pointed war poem ever written?

I Want to go HomeSung by infantry from the Boer war onwards

I want to go home. I want to go home.The whizz-bangs and shrapnel They whistle and roar,I don’t want to go on the top any more,Take me over the sea,Where the Alleymans can’t catch me.Oh my! I don’t want to die.I want to go home.

Tyne Cot at NightJim Boyes, Coope, Boyes & Simpson

On contemplation of the famous war cemetery.

A silver moon was in the sky, And from the south a warm wind blew.We thought we’d seen it all before,But this was something new.

Just rows and rows of pale white stones,Standing out in the morning dew.And a wall inscribed with more homicide,Than a lifetime’s friendship ever knew.

A monument to those who fellSpeaks still of duty nobly done.And those who followed to their fates,Followed the lie that first begun.

When the wheels of history rolled into placeAnd the call went out to serve the gun,Which relentlessly, without poetry,Killed a generation of our sons.

And as we wander through the gloom,What stories could these stones re-tell?Each one a different former life,Each one a different dying hell.

A Catholic spurned, an exile returnedAnd a General reduced to tears.It’s their legacy that the truth should be,Remembered now and down the years.

Only the truth can bring us peace,And truth in time will free these souls.And those who manufacture warWill crawl, dejected, to their holes.

And for us it seems like far off dreams,But here the seeds of peace are sown.And, like a gardener, we must stand by,To nurture them until they’re grown.

And finally To my great regret, I didn’t find any satisfactory musical way of making reference to the conscientious objector movement, the experiences of non-white troops or the rise of international socialism over the course of the war. These are huge omissions, but sometimes there’s just not a song to fit.

The UK’s 16,000 ‘conchies’ were mocked in the press as lazy/weak/cowardly/traitors/homosexual, as Britain’s first ever conscription laws enlisted 2.5 million extra troops from 1916 onwards. They were imprisoned, sentenced to forced labour, threatened with execution and often ostracised for years after the war.

Soldiers from non-white colonies (in the empires of Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and so on), who died in their millions were slow to be recognised in official war figures, often treated appallingly after the war ended, and have received scant recognition for their sacrifice, even today.

The spread of socialist ideals and echoes of the Russian revolutions struck fear into Establishment’s heart and played a part in precipitating the German surrender. The role the war played in accelerating social evolution is a complex subject, but by the end of 1918 the idea that some were born to rule and others to be ruled, was dead and buried (along with 41 million soldiers and civilians).

This centenary is inevitably the last time we commemorate the First World War so profoundly.

Thank you for helping us remember.

The Whiteford brothers; Wilfred, Graham and Hubert, from St George, Bristol. One of whom – Hubert – refused to take any part in the war and was sent to Horfield Prison while one brother agreed to undertake non-combatant duties as an ambulance driver. The third brother agreed to be conscripted.

Courtesy of Bristol Radical History Group

THE TOURST GEORGE’S BRISTOL

Great George Street, Bristol BS1 5RR 7 July 2018, 7.30pm

ST PAUL’S CHURCH Coronation Road, Southville, Bristol BS3 1DG

20 October 2018, 7.30pm

ST ALBAN’S CHURCH Coldharbour Road, Westbury Park, Bristol BS6 7NU

27 October 2018, 7.30pm

ST BARTHOLOMEW’S CHURCH Sommerville Road, Bristol BS6 5BZ

4 November 2018, 3pm

BRISTOL MUSEUM & ART GALLERY SPECIAL ARMISTICE DAY FINAL PERFORMANCE

Queens Road, Bristol BS8 1RL 11 November 2018, 6pm

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

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With thanks to: Annabel Reddick, writer and editor, first alto and Paul Ellis, graphic designer, second tenor.