Event overview
A music spatial performance marking 70 years of the very night the blitz (code named Operation Moonlight Sonata by the Luftwaffe) started over the city.
Produced by Noise of the Past ( http://www.gold.ac.uk/methods-lab/noise-past ) the starting point for this commission was an inter-generational dialogue in poetry about how one asks and tells of the experiences of war between Sawarn Singh - a WWII soldier who fought in Burma, the Middle East and Africa before moving to Coventry – and his grandson Kuldip Powar.
Musical composer Francis Silkstone responded to the haunting poetic dialogue as the basis of Post Colonial War Requiem, which will be performed by moving musicians in spatial interaction with the Cathedral. Benjamin Britten’s original War Requiem inaugurated the newly-built Cathedral in 1962 which also took the poetry of Wilfred Owen as its inspiration.
The poetry in the piece is a very touching moment of inter-generational exchange. With the grandson wanting to know and the grandfather finding it difficult to face the traumas of war he saw in WW2. There is a line for instance that states “If only the world understood there is no glory in war.”
This piece brings an international and multi-cultural perspective to a series of events on the blitz taking place nationally, that normally offer a European angle, with little recognition of the labour and lives of those from the colonies during WW1 and WW2. Many of whom were through family and friends involved in these war.
It takes the classic War Requiem by Benjamin Britten as a source of inspiration, which is in itself a pacifist piece and turns it around to face the colonies.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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14 Nov 2010 | 8:30pm - 10:00pm |
Accessibility
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