“My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity…All a poet can do today is warn.” These words by Wilfred Owen are inscribed on the title page of British composer Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem.” Britten combined the Latin text of the Requiem Mass with nine poems of the World… Read more »
Category: Music Festival
Ameen Mukdad
Amid the ruins of an ancient shrine in the city of Mosul in Iraqi, the violinist Ameen Mukdad played his composition “I am Free.” That composition was written while Mosul was under the stern rule of the Islamic State which banned music and musical instruments. Mukdad played in hiding, but eventually his music was discovered… Read more »
Masao Ohki (1901-1971)
Japanese composer Masao Ohki was profoundly moved by The Hiroshima Panels painted by Iri and Toshi Maruki (See the article about the Marukis in our Peace Art Festival). Inspired by their first six panels which had been completed by 1953 he composed his Fifth Symphony. The six movements of the symphony follow the themes of the six… Read more »
Emmanuel Jal
Emmanuel Jal’s book War Child: A Child Soldier’s Story is one of his ways of fighting against war and working for peace. The other way is through his African hip-hop music. As he says in the book, “It is time for me to tell my story using the music and lyrics that are my weapons… Read more »
“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a Christmas poem that has entered the list of carols frequently sung, published in songbooks, and put into the never-ending loop of musak piped into American malls. But there is a dramatic story of suffering and faith expressed in this poem out of a context of war and dreams of peace…. Read more »