Raymond Deane
Voices, receding...
Duration: 12'
Solos:
piano
soprano
Voices, receding...
Work introduction
The first two songs, composed in 2015 for Elizabeth Hilliard (soprano) and David Bremner (piano), are settings of poems by Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen, both of whom were killed in World War I. For Rosenberg war is an "ancient crimson curse", while Owen's unfinished poem laments "The monstrous anger of our taciturn guns. / The majesty of the insults of their mouths."
Almost a decade later, I added a setting of Words Whispered to a Child Under Siege by the American poet Joseph Fasano (b.1982) in which a parent comforts his child by pretending that the approaching soldiers are merely playing a game: "When the game is done you get another life."
Voices, receding... is one of a number of my works that are protests against the injustice and horror of war. it is dedicated to Elizabeth Hilliard and David Bremner, with thanks to Joseph Fasano for permission to set and reprint his poem.