World War I was an enormous shock to humanity. The casualty count was unprecedented: more than 38 million. Moreover, during the last year of the war a calamitous influenza pandemic struck, killing some 50-100 million people worldwide. Centuries-old regimes fell; revolutions broke out. Such massive upheaval also inspired a great deal of literature, art and music; in all realms of culture, traditions were swept away as humanity strove to cope with disaster. The former Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra (relaunched this season as Milwaukee Musaik) performs a concert reflecting back on it all: “In Memoriam: Music of the First World War.” Philomusica Quartet joins them in this endeavor.
The program’s most famous composer is Claude Debussy; while his Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp isn’t necessarily “war music,” it was composed in 1915 and gives us a sense of where chamber music was at the time. Arnold Schönberg is the program’s other big name. His Der Eiserne Brigade (“The Iron Brigade”) certainly is war music, of a sort. Biographer Malcolm MacDonald describes the piece as “a spoof march for piano quintet, written for a ‘merry evening’ in camp during Schönberg’s military service.” As such, “it contains several good musical jokes, and popular regimental melodies are worked into the texture.” Schönberg’s acerbity is evinced by the fact that, though he was a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army at the time, his work is “one of the least militaristic marches ever written.”
Though fairly prolific, André Caplet (a friend of Debussy) would be more widely known today had he not died so young—he was gassed during the war, subsequently developing pleurisy. His Le Masque de la Mort Rouge for harp and string quartet will be performed. Pianist Martha Fischer and baritone Paul Rowe perform British composer Ivor Gurney’s song cycle, The Western Playland (Gurney was wounded and gassed during the war, his mental condition worsening to the point that his family had him declared insane). The wonderful idyll The Banks of Green Willow by George Butterworth, killed at the Battle of the Somme and never found, became something of an anthem for the nameless mass of soldiers of World War I. American composer James Rogers’ In Memoriam—also performed by Fischer and Rowe—sums the epic, manmade tragedy up most poignantly.
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The concert takes place at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 3 at Mount Mary University’s Helfaer Hall, 2900 Menomonee River Parkway. For tickets, visit milwaukeemusaik.org.
