1915 – 1918: War Music Movement 2

I recall many other ‘artistic’ and aesthetic activities in the trenches, including the playing of records (Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner) in an officer’s ‘Quarters’. This was before that catastrophic explosion which had torn me apart. Also, I heard some poetry being read on occasion.

(Robert Nichols)

With the encouragement of a Wesleyan Chaplain, Revd Arthur Swales Hullah, I was brought into the range of the poetic voices of Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen, whose creative sounds have since filled the hearts of so many, drawing attention to the horrors, the pity and the utter waste of war. I was also aware of other poetic voices (Siefried Sassoon and Robert Nichols) being read to the men. Interestingly, Nichols later became related to the composer Roger Quilter through marriage, thus bringing music close to his heart.  He later became friendly with Frederick Delius through his university friend Philip Hesletine, and also had strong associations with Eric Fenby, who, in the 1930s, set one of his poems to music. (More of this later)

So lots of musical inner sounds here, in the form of poetic expression!

 I heard that Nichols’s first great love was the violinist Daisy Kennedy who eventually married the famous Russian-born pianist Benno Moiseivitch.  What a coincidence that was!  Daisy Kennedy was a direct descendant of my maker, Thomas Kennedy of Princes Street, Westminster London.  Nichols rubbed shoulders with many musicians during his life, including Edward Elgar, Arthur Bliss, Bernard van Dieren, Frank Schuster [remember I first met Frank when he badgered his mother to buy me at the Wroxham Fair in Norfolk in 1863].

(Karl Stamm, d.1919)

But most importantly of all, after the German troops had overrun the British ‘dug out’, and I was lying in ‘in pieces’ after my neck had been shattered, I heard even more poetry.  This time it was the beautiful and poignant writings of Karl Stamm and Georg Trackl, German speaking soldiers from Switzerland and Austria serving on the Eastern Front.  To my amazement, as I heard their poetry being read in the officer’s quarters, I perceived the identical sounds and expressions of pity and utter wastefulness conveyed earlier by the British poems. Trakl had a sister who was a famous professional pianist.  So, here was the sound of unity and identity, the music of solidarity and human belonging which transcends different language barriers.  It was yet another expression of that ‘crucified’ harmony which has been burnt into my body and sound world, remaining there forever.  I was intrigued to learn that all German soldiers were given, with their kit, a copy of Nietzsche’s poem ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’, as well as Luther’s Bible.

(Georg Trakl, d.1914)

[In 1962 the British composer Benjamin Britten shook the musical world with his ‘War Requiem’ in which he placed the pitiful poetry of Wilfred Owen alongside the setting of the Latin Mass. My owner at that time, Gladys & Leslie’s son Harvey, took part in an early performance of this great work at the Royal Festival Hall, and was greatly moved by it].

(An image linked to the ‘War Requiem’)

I can’t help pondering  how the sounds associated with this horrific war, emanating from the trenches and the skies above them, have made an indelible impression on the future creative imagination, and the direction of the thoughts of poets like Brooke, Trakl, Owen, Sassoon, Stamm, and on musicians such as Vaughan Williams, Arnold Shoenberg, Fritz Kreisler, Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg, George Butterworth……all of whom witnessed this hell-hole first hand (and ‘first ear’) on both the Western and the Eastern Fronts.  They have been scorched into my battered body – there is no doubt about that.

I will recount thoughts about some of the musicians listed above in my next ‘Movement’.