Requiem Fragments

07/31/2014 - 16h12

On Monday at the Royal Albert Hall in London the Tallis Scholars, an early music vocal ensemble, will perform the world premiere of a new work by the late composer John Tavener.

His "Requiem Fragments" will end the concert held on the evening of the 4th of August to mark the hundred years since the beginning of the Great War of 1914-1918. It was a conflict which cost over 37million military and civilian casualties.

Over a million men from Great Britain, and Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians and South Africans from the British Empire died, as well as millions of soldiers from France, Russia, Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, were killed in Saravejo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb assassin. Ultimatums and mass mobilizations followed.

The German invasion of neutral Belgium brought Britain into the war. In the end the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires all fell. It was to be "the war to end all wars." In fact the First World War spawned a century of conflicts, saw the rise of Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and brought the Second World War.

Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary in August 1914, said that "the lamps are going out all over Europe." In fact it marked the beginning of the end Europe's dominant role in the world.

Brazil was neutral for much of the conflict. But Brazilian public opinion was inflamed after Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, and the pro-neutral, German origin, Lauro Muller, the Brazilian Foreign Minister, was forced to resign. German enterprises were attacked and German vessels seized.

The sinking of Brazilian ships led President Wenceslau Braz to declare war on Germany on 26 October 1917. But anti-war demonstrations were as large as were those in favour of war. After a general strike in 1917 the government used emergency powers to repress protests.

Brazil was the only Latin American county to join the war. The Brazilian fleet arrived at Gibraltar just days before the armistice was declared on 11 November 1918.

At Paddington Station in London there is a statute to the unknown soldier. I have walked past it a hundred times. This year thousands of school children have written letters to him. I will look with more reverence in future. My grandfather served in the Royal Artillery.

He was poison gassed on the Western Front. Suffering the debilitating consequences he died in January 1933. His story is not the worse by any means. It is like that of so many millions of other ordinary young soldiers who served bravely and honourably, their promising lives transformed, and tragically cut short, by that bitter and brutal conflict.