As the nation prepares for two minutes of silence on Armistice Day, a BBC Scotland radio documentary explores the role of Anstruther and Perth musicians who contributed to a musical composition written to mark 100 years since the end of the Battle of the Somme. Michael Alexander reports.
With its tolling instrumental underscore of tubular bell, horn and double bass, the ghostly voices of the choir give a haunting, hymn-like feel to the staccato text.
“Those who lost their lives…Those who are still fighing…Those who have gone before us…those who made the ultimate sacrifice…”
When the world premier of Memorial Ground, by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang, was performed at the East Neuk Festival in July, it won rave reviews .
The musical composition to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, was sung by Theatre of Voices, Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus and singers from Waid Academy, St Andrews’s Chorus and Anstruther Philarmonic Choir.
The piece was commissioned by the East Neuk Festival in collaboration with 14-18 NOW, the UK’s official arts programme for the First World War centenary.
Now with the work having been shared by choirs across the country, it culminates this weekend with choirs performing their own versions of Memorial Ground at concerts, services and school assemblies on and around Remembrance Sunday.
In a BBC Radio Scotland documentary being broadcast on Friday November 11 in the immediate run-up to the traditional 11am memorial silence, Callum McLeod, head of music at Waid Academy in Anstruther, explains how the music and lyrics are like a metaphor for the lives that stopped abruptly and violently during the First World War.
He said: “The moving music and the moving texts give me a real link to the past. My own grandfather fought at the Somme and survived. My father was born after the First World War so I am here literally, my children are here literally, because my grandfather was one of the lucky ones who survived.
“The world premier performance took place at the end of the East Neuk Festival at the beginning of July. There were people literally moved to tears by it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPeobCFJfSI
“And there was a moment of silence after the performance ended before the applause began. That spoke volumes in itself. But also tolling through the whole piece was a tubular bell and I was privileged to play that.
“The very sound of the bell, representing a tolling funeral bell, for me added real intensity and emotion to the music and it was very important for me personally.”
Lorna Hamilton of Perth and Kinross Council said Memorial Ground is “brilliant” because it’s given a platform to celebrate and remember local men lost – and poignantly, given Black Watch deaths over the past decade, it was sadly as relevant as ever.
She said: “We read through the words and there was stunned silence in the room. I think there were a few tears from people not least myself.
“We got involved in Memorial Ground because we have a staff choir and we sing along with Perth College staff choir.
“Once we start singing it and once all the parts come together, it’s really powerful.”
- On Memorial Ground is broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland at 10.50 am on Friday November 11
