Emily Feldberg's Music

LAMENT a setting from
Fragments: Voices from the First World War

DETAILS AND TEXTS/TRANSLATIONS.

Lament:
Composer's note: This segment acts as a sort of punctuation, appearing three times in the full work, with a baritone solo on the second occasion. The theme is based on part of the chord progression of the Agnus Dei from Mozart's Requiem. After the initial blast of grief, the repressed sob of the accompaniment emphasizes the sorrow of the whole piece, which lasts exactly two minutes: a reference to a minute's silence each for the English and German sides. The section begins with diary extracts from the German artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) ⁶, whose 18-year-old son Peter was killed in Flanders in October 1914. Writing 3 years later, Kollwitz was reflecting on what 1917 had brought and what it had taken away ⁷. This is followed by a phrase from Vera Brittain, 'Life on its way to death' ⁸, and another from a wounded Indian officer's letter, written from the Indian General Hospital in Brighton: 'There is no counting the number of lives lost'.⁹ Subedar Mohammed Agim was one of the nearly 1.5 million Indian volunteer soldiers who served in the war.

Texts:

Lament:
Schmerz! Schmerz!
[Pain! Pain!]
Genommen und genommen ^{[6] [7]}
[Taken and taken]
Menschen genommen, Glauben genommen
[People taken, faith taken]
I walk in the half-light, I walk in the half-light
The pain has left weariness, the pain has left weariness
Life on its way to death ^[8]
Schmerz! Schmerz!
Schmerz! Schmerz!
Ich geh' im Halbdunkel
[I walk in the half-light/twilight - lit. half-dark]
Der Schmerz hat Müdigkeit zurück gelassen
[The pain has left weariness behind it]
No counting the lives lost, none are left ^[9]
Schmerz!

REFERENCES:

6 From Käthe Kollwitz, Die Tagebücher. btb Verlag (Random House) 1999. First published 1955, edited by Hanz Kollwitz. Retrieved from www.adelinde.net/kathe-kollwitz-zeitzeugin-des-1-weltkrieges//
7 With thanks to Trevor Brawn for advice on translation.
8 Vera Brittain, 1916, in Vera Brittain: A Life by Paul Berry & Mark Bostridge (1996). Pimlico, London.
9 Courtesy of the British Library: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/excerpt-letter-from-mohammed-agim-to-subedar-major-firoz-khan#sthash.k2V5hSR0.dpuf Shelfmark IOR/L/MIL/5/825/4 f.425

LAMENT a setting from Fragments: Voices from the First World War

LAMENT a setting from
Fragments: Voices from the First World War