Music and Mayhem : Composers during World War One.
Programme 4 : Lest We Forget
When Gustav Holst started to compose his “Planets” Suite, he began with Mars, the Bringer of War. It was created in 1913 and 1914, before the outbreak of war and a terrible premonition it turned out to be. In the final programme of the series marking the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of World War One, Ian Fox examines the work of composers whose lives and music were defined and shaped by their experiences of the so called “war to end all wars.”