Music is associated with the times of WWII, both popular and classical. Songs include “As Time Goes By”, “The White Cliffs of Dover” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” co-written by SLU’s own Kim Gannon ’24. The featured work is Song of Thanksgiving by Ralph Vaughan Williams, commissioned by the BBC to be performed at the end of hostilities.
This concert was to be presented in April 2020, hence the title “75 Years Later” The defining cataclysmic event of the 20th Century, World War Two inspired all manner of music, both in the popular and classical realms. University Chorus, directed by Barry Torres and accompanied by Gerri McGrath, will explore a small sampling of this eclectic body of music.
From the popular sphere will be such hits as “ Begin the Beguine”(recorded by Artie Shaw), “In the Mood” (recorded by Glenn Miller), and “A Nightingale Sang on Berkeley Square”, as well as songs specifically inspired by the war – “The White Cliffs of Dover”, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”, and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, co-written by SLU’s own Kim Gannon ’24.
The featured work is Song of Thanksgiving by great British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, commissioned by the BBC to be performed at the end of hostilities. A powerful work infused with redemption and hope, it sets a variety of texts from the Bible (Isaiah and The Song of the Three Holy Children) Shakespeare and Rudyard Kipling. Another Vaughan Williams works Six Choral Songs (to be sung in time of war)movingly sets the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Also on the program will be American composer Michael Horvit’s haunting setting of an anonymous text found scrawled on a wall in a concentration camp, Even When God is Silent.
The event is free, open to the public, and in-person, with live streaming. Watch the Livestream