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Programme Note

Synopsis:
Music for the Living is an allegorical depiction of the physical and moral destruction of war. In Act I, a chorus of young homeless children sing a beautiful melody taught to them by a blind old man on a violin. But a bombastic military band enters, led by a trigger-happy officer. The power of the children’s incantation is more powerful than the military music, but a woman with a whip appears and using violence, finds recruits amongst the children. In Act II, a stylised version of a Romantic heroic opera is performed in a military hospital. As the piece is over, the hospital is hit by a bomb. The old man reappears and muses on the boundaries between real life and art.