composer

Vriend, Jan

From the start, Jan Vriend has been a musical omnivore who combines a strongly modernistic approach with openness to the interests of and needs for a good musical education. ...

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composition

La Guerra : for mezzo-soprano and baritone, mixed choir and symphony orchestra / Jan Vriend

Publisher's number: 17544
Genre: Vocal music
Subgenre: Mixed choir and orchestra
Scoring: GK4 2fl(picc) 2ob eh 2cl cl-b 2fg cfg 4h 2tpt 2trb trb-b tb perc hp str
Duration: 16'00"
Year of composition: 2016
Status: fully digitized (real-time delivery)

Description:
La Guerra combines 5 different poems in 4 different European languages. As it is designed to commemorate the centenary of Armistice Day in 2018 – the day after my 80th birthday – and with BREXIT looming, I was determined to give it an uncompromising European slant, up to and including a reference to the European International Hymn, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.
"La Guerra", by the contemporary Spanish poet Antonia Álvarez Álvarez, is the central text of the work and holds the composition together. It laments the misery of (any) war in a short litany of woes that characterise its inhumanity, futile suffering and ignominious degradation of life. The other poems, interspersed between the verses of La Guerra, were chosen to highlight other aspects of life or relate to war and peace in other ways.
"Violeta", also by Antonia Álvarez Álvarez, contemplates the beauty of a single violet; in all its simplicity the sort of thing wars trample on regardless. "Hinter Bäumen", by the German (Jewish) poet Elsa Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945) and written during the First World War, expresses an outpouring of love, its rejection and consequent sense of hopelessness. "Strange Meeting" (extract), by Wilfred Owen who, with Siegfried Sassoon, is probably the best-known war poet of all and served in the First World War, talks about a dream in which he meets an enemy soldier whom he recognises as a fellow human being he killed, drawn into the same madness as he himself. I only used the first ten and the concluding five lines of the poem, leaving out the long middle section. "La Paix", by Lauer Christine, a pupil at the Lycée de Garçons in Luxemburg, may have been written as an entry in a competition. It is a very simple but straightforward statement about peace in Europe and the price paid for it.
La Guerra can be preceded by my overture Tombeau des Vies Manquées, written in 2015 to commemorate Armistice Day and lasting 6 minutes.
Jan Vriend

Sheet Music
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Product Description Price/piece Count
Score Download to Newzik (A3), 62 pages EUR 36.97
Download as PDF (A3), 62 pages EUR 44.36
Hardcopy, normal size (A3), 62 pages EUR 73.94
Hardcopy, study size (A4), 62 pages EUR 49.96