Howard Goodall's Requiem 'Eternal Light'

Started by vandermolen, June 12, 2016, 12:00:11 AM

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vandermolen

I wonder what the assembled members make of this. He is best known as the composer of (very good) film and TV music including Blackadder and the 'Vicar of Dibley' (best known to UK audiences I guess). I suspect that many will bracket this with Karl Jenkins's 'The Armed Man', which I do not like at all, and be dismissive of it. However, I find myself returning to this work, which I find very touching. It is actually a ballet (the back of the booklet features an unconsciously hilarious photo of the composer with one of the dancers). I liked his music for the excellent Churchill drama 'The Gathering Storm'. The music was not on CD so they made me a private copy of it which was nice:
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"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

springrite

Do what I must do, and let what must happen happen.

vandermolen

#2
 
Quote from: springrite on June 12, 2016, 12:14:48 AM
Listened to the samples and I like it!
Thank you Paul and pleased to hear that you liked what you heard. 😀
It was written in 2008 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One - the last one to feature any living survivors. There is, what I think is, a very touching setting of John McCrae's war poem 'In Flanders Field' interspersed with biblical settings.
The composer was in New York and witnessed the 9/11 attacks. Another work on the CD 'Spared' is his musical response to what he saw.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).