Piano Sonata #29 in E minor - Geister Gefallener Soldaten
Listen to Piano Sonata #29 in E minor - Geister Gefallener Soldaten
This sonata by James Domine is comprised of two movements that express some of the tragic futility of war. The subtitle "Geister Gefallener Soldaten," which means "Ghosts of Dead Soldiers" is given in German because the history of war in the last century is especially replete with the tragic sacrifice of young German lives whose screams and lamentations call out from beyond the grave. Theirs is a story that is hard to endure, of relationships that never were, of families destroyed, of loves lost, of promise and potential never brought to fruition and of a cultured, civilized society of educated intelligent people who knowing better should never have allowed the horrors of war to happen at all. There is a universal moral lesson to be learned in studying history, unless it should repeat itself at our peril.
In the first movement, entitled "Processional March," we hear a macabre deployment of dead soldiers eternally trudging off to the cadence of a military band playing a funeral march for the damned. The composer states that "while all death in time of war is a tragic futile sacrifice of young men's lives, it is especially abhorrent in the service of tyranny, injustice, and oppression." Fathers and mothers whose sons are slain fighting for despots and criminals whose own sons are safely shielded from danger have scarcely a prayer to utter over the broken bodies and mutilated remains of their progeny. There can be no comfort or solace in damage caused by aggressive violence, for there can be no defense of unrighteousness. The dead soldiers are doomed to march on and on, until the Judgment Day finally brings an end to their travail.
In the second movement, a battlefield scene cast in sonata form unfolds in imaginary muddy trenches of more than a century ago. Against a relentlessly ubiquitous reverberating hum of roaring engines that power the machines of destruction, tanks and exploding artillery shells create an atmosphere of Hell on Earth. An incomprehensible droning cacophony of flashing fire and flying shrapnel permeate the once-flowered field, now blasted full of holes and strewn with barbed wire. The last thing the young soldier hears is the rattatat-tatting spray of bullets from machine guns that pepper the air with the whoosh of death. The last thing he sees are the mangled corpses of his fellows, limbs askew and missing. He hears their tortured screams of agony that will go unanswered, mixed with the almost forgotten refrain of a folk-song that he doesn't know if he is really hearing or if it is emerging from his trauma-addled subconscious mind. He feels the warm flow of blood against his skin and he wonders if it is his own, or his comrade's? As the pools of blood mix together, mired in the sticky stench of mud, the frenzied buzzing of mosquitoes and flies add the pestilence of infestation to the carnage. Looking up, high above the furor, the last thing the young man sees are the wispy clouds tracing patterns in the wind-swept sky that seems to speak of days to come that he will never live to see.
Listen to Piano Sonata #29 in E minor - Geister Gefallener Soldaten
This sonata by James Domine is comprised of two movements that express some of the tragic futility of war. The subtitle "Geister Gefallener Soldaten," which means "Ghosts of Dead Soldiers" is given in German because the history of war in the last century is especially replete with the tragic sacrifice of young German lives whose screams and lamentations call out from beyond the grave. Theirs is a story that is hard to endure, of relationships that never were, of families destroyed, of loves lost, of promise and potential never brought to fruition and of a cultured, civilized society of educated intelligent people who knowing better should never have allowed the horrors of war to happen at all. There is a universal moral lesson to be learned in studying history, unless it should repeat itself at our peril.
In the first movement, entitled "Processional March," we hear a macabre deployment of dead soldiers eternally trudging off to the cadence of a military band playing a funeral march for the damned. The composer states that "while all death in time of war is a tragic futile sacrifice of young men's lives, it is especially abhorrent in the service of tyranny, injustice, and oppression." Fathers and mothers whose sons are slain fighting for despots and criminals whose own sons are safely shielded from danger have scarcely a prayer to utter over the broken bodies and mutilated remains of their progeny. There can be no comfort or solace in damage caused by aggressive violence, for there can be no defense of unrighteousness. The dead soldiers are doomed to march on and on, until the Judgment Day finally brings an end to their travail.
In the second movement, a battlefield scene cast in sonata form unfolds in imaginary muddy trenches of more than a century ago. Against a relentlessly ubiquitous reverberating hum of roaring engines that power the machines of destruction, tanks and exploding artillery shells create an atmosphere of Hell on Earth. An incomprehensible droning cacophony of flashing fire and flying shrapnel permeate the once-flowered field, now blasted full of holes and strewn with barbed wire. The last thing the young soldier hears is the rattatat-tatting spray of bullets from machine guns that pepper the air with the whoosh of death. The last thing he sees are the mangled corpses of his fellows, limbs askew and missing. He hears their tortured screams of agony that will go unanswered, mixed with the almost forgotten refrain of a folk-song that he doesn't know if he is really hearing or if it is emerging from his trauma-addled subconscious mind. He feels the warm flow of blood against his skin and he wonders if it is his own, or his comrade's? As the pools of blood mix together, mired in the sticky stench of mud, the frenzied buzzing of mosquitoes and flies add the pestilence of infestation to the carnage. Looking up, high above the furor, the last thing the young man sees are the wispy clouds tracing patterns in the wind-swept sky that seems to speak of days to come that he will never live to see.
Listen to Piano Sonata #29 in E minor - Geister Gefallener Soldaten
This sonata by James Domine is comprised of two movements that express some of the tragic futility of war. The subtitle "Geister Gefallener Soldaten," which means "Ghosts of Dead Soldiers" is given in German because the history of war in the last century is especially replete with the tragic sacrifice of young German lives whose screams and lamentations call out from beyond the grave. Theirs is a story that is hard to endure, of relationships that never were, of families destroyed, of loves lost, of promise and potential never brought to fruition and of a cultured, civilized society of educated intelligent people who knowing better should never have allowed the horrors of war to happen at all. There is a universal moral lesson to be learned in studying history, unless it should repeat itself at our peril.
In the first movement, entitled "Processional March," we hear a macabre deployment of dead soldiers eternally trudging off to the cadence of a military band playing a funeral march for the damned. The composer states that "while all death in time of war is a tragic futile sacrifice of young men's lives, it is especially abhorrent in the service of tyranny, injustice, and oppression." Fathers and mothers whose sons are slain fighting for despots and criminals whose own sons are safely shielded from danger have scarcely a prayer to utter over the broken bodies and mutilated remains of their progeny. There can be no comfort or solace in damage caused by aggressive violence, for there can be no defense of unrighteousness. The dead soldiers are doomed to march on and on, until the Judgment Day finally brings an end to their travail.
In the second movement, a battlefield scene cast in sonata form unfolds in imaginary muddy trenches of more than a century ago. Against a relentlessly ubiquitous reverberating hum of roaring engines that power the machines of destruction, tanks and exploding artillery shells create an atmosphere of Hell on Earth. An incomprehensible droning cacophony of flashing fire and flying shrapnel permeate the once-flowered field, now blasted full of holes and strewn with barbed wire. The last thing the young soldier hears is the rattatat-tatting spray of bullets from machine guns that pepper the air with the whoosh of death. The last thing he sees are the mangled corpses of his fellows, limbs askew and missing. He hears their tortured screams of agony that will go unanswered, mixed with the almost forgotten refrain of a folk-song that he doesn't know if he is really hearing or if it is emerging from his trauma-addled subconscious mind. He feels the warm flow of blood against his skin and he wonders if it is his own, or his comrade's? As the pools of blood mix together, mired in the sticky stench of mud, the frenzied buzzing of mosquitoes and flies add the pestilence of infestation to the carnage. Looking up, high above the furor, the last thing the young man sees are the wispy clouds tracing patterns in the wind-swept sky that seems to speak of days to come that he will never live to see.