2016 marks the centenary anniversary of the mid-point of the World War I, or The Great War. World War I remains poignant in our memory for its surrealism, scale of human tragedy, pathos, and stupidity. It left behind a moving body of art, poetry, literature, and music that eloquently expresses the pain rather than the glory of war. The Chorale's Departed Friends concert will honor Memorial Day with a program that features principally music by composers alive then, including composers who served or were killed in the Great War. The program includes works by Vaughn Williams, Debussy, Browne, Willan, Ravel, and Berg. The second half of the program will feature Kastalsky's Memory Eternal to the Fallen Heroes, a stirring Requiem that draws from Russian and Eastern Orthodoxy, as well as the Roman Catholic mass.
Everyone attending the concert will be given a remembrance poppy, inspired by the World War I poem “In Flanders Fields,” and adopted by the American Legion and throughout the United Kingdom and Canada to commemorate servicemen and women killed in all conflicts since 1914.
Read more about the composers and how their lives were forever altered by The Great War in this article by CHC's founder Parker Jayne.