In the coming weeks there will be no escape from World War I commemorations. In the concert hall, onstage and in exhibition spaces we’ll be overwhelmed by sombre torrents of remembrance – which of course is as it should be. War has shaped even the lives of those of us without direct experience of it; and while history tells the facts, art can initiate a deeper, more reflective understanding. Maybe.
Many of the concerts scheduled tread the same ground: English pastoral music from the early 20th century alongside readings from the poets of the trenches. And although I love Vaughan Williams, Howells and Butterworth, I feel I’m reaching saturation point with all that.
But there are more imaginative projects to be found, and one of them has been Memorial: a performance piece involving music, words and movement at the Barbican. Based on an epic poem by Australian writer Alice Oswald, it involved a teeming crowd of largely silent amateur performers whose essential task was to swarm back and forth across the stage for several hours while the actress Helen Morse recited the imagined names of fallen soldiers in the Trojan Wars.
It played out like the checklist on a public war memorial: a relentless roll-call of the dead turned into music-theatre. And although the visual concept owed too much to abstract Robert Wilson/Philip Glass collaborations from the 1980s, it amassed compelling power – thanks largely to a score by film composer Jocelyn Pook that also owed a debt to Glass but came with better tunes and visceral impact as delivered by a live band. It ran on for too long but held me spellbound for two thirds of the duration … after which I started looking at my watch. Sometimes a good thing doesn’t discipline itself to stop.
The star turn at the Last Night of the Proms this year was Gerald Finley, advertising his Canadian background with a maple-leaf flag round his waist. Last week he was less garishly attired (in what looked like an undertaker’s frock coat) for a solemn song recital in the series run by pianist Julius Drake at Middle Temple Hall. Schubert’s last song collection, Schwanengesang, played alongside Brahms’s Four Serious Songs, written to texts on death, decay and transience from Martin Luther’s version of Ecclesiastes. Not too many laughs there.
But the eloquence of Finley’s firm bass-baritone was nonetheless a pleasure. It’s a dark voice but not heavy, and he uses it with wonderful refinement, anchored in stability (he barely moves during a song) so that the smallest details register. These are the things that make a song recital – and that make an artist as opposed to mere singer.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.