Songs Inspired by the First World War
This feature first appeared in an abbreviated form in The Independent (12/7/14) Previewing the 1964 Proms, which included a short programme of compositions marking the 50th anniversary of the First World War, The Times observed that “the actual quantity of music inspired by the 1914–18 War is small, and its language has little meaning for us today.” Survivors were understandably only too keen to forget the abject horror of the conflict. No one wanted to remember it with music. The turning point was the stage show Oh, What a Lovely War , which had premiered the previous year. The idea of transforming a 1961 radio documentary into a musical was initially unpopular with the radical producer Joan Littlewood, who detested anything to do with the military. Nevertheless her production, and the 1969 film adaptation, chimed with a younger, more critically-inclined generation, ready to review what they knew about the war their grandparents had fought in. Books and TV docume