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A Cry from a World Aflame (opus 48) (Elegiac music for strings, trumpets and percussion), composed Withington, Manchester between December 2009 and April 2011, is a musical representation of a world where war and conflict are ever-present factors and where there are many losers –combatants, civilians, children. The work commemorates the losers. Its duration of approximately ten minutes should be seen as symbolic of the pity of war and strife.
While writing the piece the composer reread a number of First World War poets. Not surprisingly those who search for an underlying programme might sense the following: The Rumblings of War; War; Silent Battlefield; Requiem[i].
The musical materials consist of an insistent rhythm often assigned to the timpani; a recurring ‘chord of death’ made up of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale; an expressive 12-note melody introduced on violins and violas; and a bugle-like theme scored for muted trumpets which appears more than halfway through the piece -having been anticipated in the work’s opening bars. The entry of the quartet of distant trumpets sees the mood becoming increasingly plaintive, suggestive of a requiem for the fallen. The 12-note row plays a pivotal role throughout the work, most notably its initial interval -that of a falling (or rising) major seventh.
The piece closes with an elegiac solo for unmuted trumpet which draws the variegated strands together.
[i] An early work of the composer is a setting of three war poems by Wilfred Owen for tenor and piano, later entitled ‘The Pity of War’ opus 7.
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