Using War Poetry to Compose Songs

The Studio: online composition resources Resource for teachers: Using war poetry to compose songs Introduction Poetry can be a rich source of inspiration for musical composition. As well as thematic ideas, poetry text can suggest its own rhythms or word painting (music that literally sounds like the words being sung), so is great for young composers as a framework for creative composition. In this project, we are inspired by Magnus Lindberg’s work Triumf att finnas till (Triumph to Exist), premiered by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in November 2018, which uses First World War poetry as its starting point. As this year marks the centenary of the end of the First World War, music director and educator Ros Savournin follows the same brief as Lindberg, and offers a 5-7- session musical composition project for KS3 using First World War poetry as the starting point to create songs. This project, while musical, has great cross-curricular links with history and English. Resources needed: Images of the First World War (at the end of this document) In Flanders Fields words (at the end of this document) Instruments to aid composition: keyboards, percussion, or students’ own instruments Our inspiration: Magnus Lindberg – Triumf att finnas till… (Triumph to Exist, 2018) Magnus Lindberg (1958– ) is a Finnish composer, pianist and conductor. He was the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence from 2014–2017. Commissioned by the LPO, his work Triumf att finnas till… (“Triumph to exist”) honours the centenary of the end of the First World War, and was premiered on 10 November 2018, the eve of Remembrance Sunday. Born in Helsinki in 1958, Lindberg burst onto the contemporary music scene in the early 1980s following extensive study and travel around Europe. As a young artist, he was interested in the newest and most radical ideas in contemporary classical music at the time, especially in the possibilities offered by new technologies. In his early works, he experimented with the ideas of musique concrète (using recorded sounds as raw material and modern sound editing techniques for composition; called “concrete music” because, unlike music played by live musicians, these elements aren’t flexible in the moment). Travel in the far East had also interested him in Japanese and Indonesian music, especially percussion. Kraft, premièred in Helsinki in 1985, uses an orchestra, electronics, spoken word and percussion on scrap metal. The score is a metre high! This work, which was conducted by his friend Esa-Pekka Salonen (now another world famous composer and conductor), won several awards and brought him international recognition. Lindberg has remained interested in technology, moving on from the sonic world of electronic music to exploring how computers can be involved in the process of composition – for example, using computer-generated chord sequences. But over the years, his style has refined and developed, incorporating more traditional tonality (using melodies and harmonies). His accessible Clarinet Concerto (2002), with its folk style melody and lush orchestration is popular with audiences, and his most recent large scale work, Two Episodes (perfomed by the LPO at the BBC Proms in 2016) is a tribute to Beethoven and a companion piece to his 9th Symphony. Triumf att finnas till… is a work for choir and orchestra. The text is taken from a set of poems written in 1916 by Edith Södergran (1892–1923), a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet. Modernist in style, intensely personal and in turns defiant and bleak, the poems are generally accepted to be a reflection on the carnage of the First World War and on her own struggles with tuberculosis, which she caught as a teenager and eventually died from at just 31. “The sun fills my breast to the brim with delightful honey and she says: once all stars go out, but they always shine fearlessly” Composition project – Setting Remembrance poetry This project is unusual in that, at the time of writing, Magnus Lindberg’s new work has not yet had its premiere! Therefore, rather than using his work as a starting point, we are imagining the starting point that Magnus Lindberg himself began with to write his piece – beginning a creative process with text from the First World War. First World War poetry has been set to music by many composers. In this project, we compose settings for John McRae’s famous poem In Flanders Fields. This project is suitable for Key Stage 3 and is designed to be delivered over a half term (around 5-7 lessons). If they are studying or have studied the First World War in History and/or The War Poets in English, then this links very effectively with those topics (especially if they have written any creative responses of their own to war poetry). The First World War as a topic is very thought-provoking, but includes some difficult themes and should be handled sensitively. Many excellent resources exist to support teaching the First World War and the War Poets. This project includes some brief historical context, but its focus is on the musical process of setting text to music. Introductory activity: The First World War in context This activity will help you gauge how much your students know about the First World War and/or remind them of what they have learned about it in other curriculum areas. Use the set of 5 pictures “Images from the First World War”. Look at the pictures in tables or small groups and discuss what you see. When and where are these photographs and posters from? What do they tell you about what was happening at the time? Images from the First World War Kitchener’s Army This recruitment poster dates from September 1914 and shows Herbert Kitchener, who was Secretary of State for War at the beginning of the First World War. One of the few people who predicted a long and drawn-out conflict, Lord Kitchener orchestrated a huge campaign to recruit a volunteer army to fight in the war. His challenging face looking directly at the viewer is now an iconic image from the time. Almost 2.5 million men volunteered for Kitchener’s army. Women on the Home Front As many of Britain’s men of working age went away to fight, back at home women filled vacancies in many essential occupations that would not have been deemed suitable for women before the war. These included the police and fire services, and of course the munitions industry, which was supplying the front with guns, bullets, mines and tanks. Flanders poppies “That sinister brown belt, a string of murdered nature” (James McConnel, American pilot, 1916) Trench warfare resulted in a complete devastation of the landscape, churning up mud and destroying woodland and fields. Following the cold winter of 1914, the spring of 1915 was unusually warm, and in Flanders, the ground that had been disturbed by fighting, combined with the warm temperature, created the perfect conditions for the field poppy to thrive. These beautiful red flowers growing in clusters on the ruined landscape became a symbol of remembrance after the war. Attack from the skies This poster from 1915 shows silhouettes of German and British airships and aeroplanes so that the public could recognise the enemy in the skies. For the very first time in history, in 1915 Britain was attacked from above. Airships were difficult to navigate in the dark or in bad weather, and so it was almost impossible to launch attacks accurately (one raid intended for London ended up dropping bombs on Hull!) The threat to military targets was therefore fairly slight, but many civilians were killed or injured, and as a consequence the “Zeppelin raids” (named after the most famous airship used by the Germans) were both hated and feared. Trench warfare This photograph by Ernest Brooks shows trenches of the 11th Cheshire Regiment at Ovilliers-la- Boisselle, on the Somme, in July 1916. One sentry keeps watch while the others sleep. Much of the fighting in the First World War took place in the form of trench warfare along the Western front – a line of territory stretching across France and Belgium with British soldiers and their allies on one side and Germans and their allies on the other. Each side fought with guns, mines and poisonous gas, and defended themselves by digging long and complicated systems of trenches which protected them from attack by the other side. Between the 2 lines of trenches was “no man’s land”, an area where soldiers would be exposed to heavy fire from both sides. Attacks almost always resulted in severe casualties, and this form of warfare resulted in an enormous loss of life for very little advance in territory. Trench warfare has since come to represent stalemate and futility in war. For more images and discussion of the First World War, have a look at the BBC’s excellent schools resources at http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/0/ww1/25621757 Composition project step 1: Start with your text If your students have studied First World War poetry and are familiar with several texts, you may wish to offer a choice of poems for pairs/groups to set. If they have written their own poems as part of a topic on the War Poets, then that’s even better, as they will most enjoy setting their own words to music. The method outlined below will work for any type of text to be set to a melody. The suggested poem for this project is In Flanders Fields by John McRae (1915). This extremely famous poem was written by a Canadian doctor stationed near Ypres, after the death of his friend.

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