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A war to end all wars A time and placeBirmingham Town Hall**** THERE is a simple beauty about a
performance which is a heartfelt, gentle and genuine commemoration of
the start of the Great War, the war that was supposed to end all wars. Estimates of the numbers who dies are just that,
estimates, numbers so large as to be beyond counting but somewhere
around 20 million is a reasonable guess – 20 million voices asking why
and even now, a century on, it is difficult to answer. A Time and Place was three voices, Sam Lee
a folk singer and song collector, a sort of latter day Cecil Sharp, and
well-established traditional folk duo Becky and Rachel Unthank. Along with arranger Adrian McNally, Rachel’s
husband, and seven excellent musicians, the trio looked at the war in
terms of songs and poems, set to music, of the time or about the time. It opens and closes with the recorded words of
Stephanie Ploughman, an old woman and her memories and the song Bideford
Bridge. There are songs set to poems by the likes of
Siegfried Sassoon with the harrowing Suicide in the Trenches and
War Film a sad song with the words of Derbyshire poet Teresa
Hooley. There was the poignant Vera’s Song with a letter
from her soldier who was shot dead a month later and then her reply. But perhaps the most poignant moment was Sam
Lee’s Keep the Home Fires Burning, sung first in German,
halten die home-feuer Brennen.
It was never a German song, words by Lena Gilbert Ford and music by Ivor Novello, but it brought home the universal cost of the war; ordinary people, the liones led by donkeys, suffered on both sides with almost two million German soldiers killed, more than any other nation. I, and Sam Lee don’t speak German, but a woman
behind me who did, was impressed at the performance, although just the
sound of the language was enough to stir emotions Ford, incidentally, an American who had moved to
England, was one of the first casualties of the new weapon of war, the
air raid, when her home in London was hit in March 1918. There were songs about the Christmas Ceasefire,
of returning home, of a soldier, the only survivor from a group of farm
boys in a village, being too afraid to see the mothers of his comrades
who had died. There were songs from Tim Dalling, more known for
comedy in the trio, The New Rope String Band, including a song which
sounds jolly enough except each verse ends with the sobering They
will never come back. There is Jim Boyes’ Spring 1919 when for
many the war, or at least the battle was still going on. Twenty years after the war 440,000 men were so
maimed or suffering from being gassed, nerves, or debilitating illness
that they had been unable to work and relied on state handouts. This project avoided glorifying or condemning
war, it just told the story of ordinary people with ordinary lives and
despite the grandeur of the Town Hall, which would have played its part
in the patriotism and recruitment a century ago, the trio of singers and
stage of musicians still managed to maintain the simplicity and intimacy
of a folk club, you would hardly have been surprised if floor singers
had been introduced, and the informality gave the evening a sort of
quiet authority. A mention to Matthew J Watkins, who created a
video on the hoof as the evening progressed with images of marching
soldiers, or broken trees and, finally, a wall of crosses all helped by
some excellent lighting. There was no pomp, no military honours, no lofty
words, just a simple and sincere marking of an event in history. Roger Clarke
17-09-14 The performance continues at the Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds on 19-09-14
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