Music Programme
The music programme will widen the scope of the project whilst keeping the focus on using music for peaceful purposes, and to encourage people to become activists for peace in whatever way they feel they may be able to do that.The bugle was originally meant for battlefield commands, and then used for signals in camp (e.g. First Post, Last Post ) Bugles do not function as instruments for extended musical events such as concerts, but valved instruments do.
Music events and concerts will be organised in support of the project as important occasions when the message of peace can be promoted. They will also be used as awareness and fund raisers.
There are several connected strands to the music programme:
- Commissioned new peace-based compositions for solo, ensemble and orchestral repertoire as funds become available.
- Works written about, influenced by or marking, The Holocaust such as Krzysztof Penderecki's Dies Irae (also known as the Auschwitz Oratorio), Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor, Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Ruth Lomon's Songs of Remembrance. Existing peace based works such as Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man and Marta Ptaszynska's Fanfare for Peace. Works by composers directly involved in or affected by war and conflict such as Katharine Parker's Down Longford Way and Vítězslava Kaprálová's Military Sinfonietta.
- Music that was played in the camps. Documentary evidence and surviving musical scores can be used to build up this area of repertoire which includes Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and works by Grieg, Schumann and Mozart.
- Yehudi Menuhin, accompanied by Benjamin Britten, gave concerts for displaced persons in the camps in 1945. One, at Bergen-Belsen, included the Debussy Violin Sonata, composed in 1917, which echoed the disaster of the First World War and contained references to gypsy music.
- Music composed by camp prisoners such as Moorsoldatenlied (Song of the Peat Bog Soldiers) – words by Johann Esser & Wolfgang Langhoff and music by Rudi Goguel and Dachaulied (Song of Dachau – also known as Arbeit Macht Frei) – words by Jura Soyfer and music by Herbert Zipper.
- Music connected to the varying nationalities and cultures of the camp prisoners such as Jewish (Hebrew, Yiddish and other related languages), Sinti, Gypsy, Hungarian and Dutch. Historical records will provide a fuller list.
- Music from past and current war zones and conflict areas across the world such as Afghanistan, Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chile, Iran, Iraq, Rwanda, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, to locate PeaceBugle as an international project with international concerns, as war and conflict continues world-wide. Where possible, musicians who have been displaced from their country and made refugees will be engaged to perform their works.