Gallipoli to the Somme , op . 191 ( 2016 )
Anthony Ritchie
Gallipoli to the Somme was commissioned by The Dunedin Symphony Orchestra with funding from Creative NZ , to commemorate World War I .
The work was premiered by The City of Dunedin Choir , with orchestra and soloists Anna Leese and Martin Snell under British conductor Simon Over ( premier performance can be viewed on : https :// vimeo . com / 208422223 ).
Gallipoli to the Somme has subsequently been performed in Invercargill , and is scheduled for performances in London and Oxford in June this year , with the U . K . Parliament Choir and Southbank Sinfonia . Tonight ’ s version for chamber orchestra and organ was specially commissioned by Auckland Choral .
Programme note by the composer
How does one create a piece of music commemorating World War I ? It is a daunting task , to say the least . There are already many great works that comment on this conflict , Britten ’ s War Requiem , for one , a piece that I have loved since I was a teenager . This was an anti-war statement that resonated through a generation . Gallipoli to the Somme is more quietly anti-war , and aims to make a humanist statement about ordinary peoples ’ experience of the war . Ordinary people – soldiers , nurses , lovers , children from different nationalities – they are represented in some small way in this work , through diary entries , poems , traditional texts and songs , and even a military plan of battle .
It is , of course , not possible to cover every perspective . There are four nations represented in the work : New Zealand , Britain , Germany and Turkey . The perspective that binds the whole structure together is provided by a soldier , Alexander Aitken , from the Otago Battalion in New Zealand . Aitken wrote a book about his experiences with the same title as this work : Gallipoli to the Somme , published in 1964 , many years after the war . Aitken was a remarkable man , a professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University , and also a fine violinist . Peter Fenton ’ s short outline about Aitken sums up the man far more eloquently than I can do – see following the end of the libretto below .
My composition traces Aitken ’ s journey from his arrival in Gallipoli , his experience of Christmas 1915 , his preparation for battle at the Somme ,
8