Music Appreciation | Monday, period 1

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal nodded at the students once they were settled in. "Last week, in the course of discussing home, we mentioned war a few times. There are any number of songs about war, its effects, its aftereffects, and the feelings it elicits. Today we'll be discussing those songs."

//It's fascinating, in its way,// Jono added, from his usual spot leaning against the desk at the front of the room. //There's such a broad cross-section of approaches to music about war, it's impossible to cover every point of view. The songs of each war are very much defined by the attitudes of the people living through those wars at the time. The bitter, the frightened, the adventure seekers looking for glory and those who discovered the hard way that 'glory' is absolutely the wrong word for it. The songs of the victors, the lament of the defeated. The cheerful sarcasm of those who are in over their heads and who refuse to let that fact drag them down... It's ugly. War is so bloody ugly. But the music that comes out of it is some of the most raw expression of human emotion you'll ever hear.//

"Music can also serve a purpose in war," Hannibal continued. "I will start today with a selection of drums from Japan. Drums there, as in many cultures, were used to set a pace for marching to war, to carry orders long distances, and to inspire the troops. This particular piece comes to us by way of a Chinese film showing the horrors the Japanese troops of the time perpetrated on the city of Nanjing, but offers some context to the music."

Once that had played, he continued. "Of course, there is also the much more romanticized and removed view of war presented in operas such as Bellini's Norma. In this aria, Norma calls her people to war so she may have revenge on an unfaithful lover. It shows a much less visceral facet of music."

He queued up the next song. "From the other side, we have Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. It was commissioned for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, after the prior cathedral was destroyed in the bombing of World War II. In response, Britten composed a requiem - the traditional Latin mass for the dead - interspersed with poems written during World War I, creating a poignant pacifist piece. We will listen to his "Dies Irae", or "Day of Wrath", from that piece."

Hannibal smiled, "I would be remiss not to include The Year 1812, festival overture in E♭ major, Opus 49. Or as some of you may know it, the 1812 Overture. The Russian composer Tchaikovsky wrote it to commemorate Russia's successful defense against Napoleon. It includes the - somewhat anachronistic - French national anthem, a notable war song in its own right, and was scored for woodwinds, strings, percussion, brass, and an entire battery of cannons. It is not often performed with full orchestration indoors, for obvious reasons," he added, amused.

"Not all war songs are about war, so much as used during it. For propaganda, morale, or simply distraction. During World War I, a popular French song was "Quand Madelon", a story about a young woman 'entertaining' the troops, although it's actually remarkably tasteful for the genre."

After that, he shook his head. "Still, lest you think that all of the more modern songs are critical of war, I offer you "Heureux Piou-piou", in which a soldier from World War I sings of the glories of war and how much he enjoys soldiering."

Jono gave his head a shake when his turn rolled around. This was a topic that hit a little close to home.

//I tried to come up with a selection of songs that gave a pretty decent representation of the past century of wars on Earth myself,// he noted, //but there's going to be a definite slant toward the anti-war protest songs here, as well. A few of them, such as Eric Bogle's The Band Played Waltzing Matilda and Bruce Robison's Travellin' Soldier - popularized by the Dixie Chicks well after the song was written - offer a retrospective look at the aftermath of wars that happened decades before. The first looks at the slaughter of Australian troops at Gallipoli during the first World War, and the second shows the loss of a young life in the Vietnam war through the eyes of the girl back home who loved him. U2 sang about the horror of the Bloody Sunday massacre, where British Troops shot at unarmed civilian protesters in Northern Ireland, exacerbating the Irish anti-British sentiment and raising support for the IRA. They actually cut out verses from the song before releasing it for fear of their own safety.//

Jono's voice had gone curiously flat during that last part. He'd seen the results of that particular conflict first-hand. It wasn't the sort of thing you forgot easily.

//They've all got a very different feeling from the more tongue-in-cheek songs written for the soldiers themselves during the war,// he said, dropping that weird neutrality from his tone. //Songs that were meant to keep the spirits up while acknowledging just how in over their heads they were, such as Arthur Aksey's Kiss me Goodnight, Sergeant Major from the Second World War, or Irving Berlin's Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning from the First, for example. Songs that took a comedic angle on the life of a soldier were something of a coping mechanism when things were the darkest.//

Jono's own soldiers had come up with no small number of songs meant to keep their spirits up during Glacia's war, for that matter. No, he wasn't sharing any of them in class today. For one, that would involve singing. For another, he was trying to actively avoid any music that might put him back in those moments, today.

//Some songs resonated on a more personal note with anybody who listened to them. Lili Marleen was so popular in Germany that Lale Andersen had them translated and released the song in English as well. It was massive hit on both sides of the same war, singing a story that people could relate to no matter where they called home, and was covered by numerous artists. Allied troops even took the tune and repurposed the lyrics into a bitter number about how their contributions to the war in Italy were being talked down on, and they were being referred to as D-Day Dodgers.//

So help him god, he wasn't done yet.

//Vietnam saw a different attitude toward songs about war, with songs like Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire, War by Edwin Starr, and Fortunate Son by CCR singing out against it outright. This prompted songs that embraced a patriotic fervor in turn, such as Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets, which sounds, interestingly enough, as though it would be more at home with the songs of the Second World War instead.//

It had been a long and bloody century. Jono had left so many things out. And he was still going. He ran a hand through his hair and then looked tiredly up at the ceiling before pressing on again.

Hannibal shifted a little to bump his elbow against Jono and send him a feeling of strength and support. It earned him a little sideways glance and a nod of thanks before Jono pressed on.

//I'm going to wrap this up on a few songs that have come out of more recent times still, prompted by the state of the world and the Iraq War. Jack Johnson's Crying Shame is another song in protest of war, though it's less angry than many others and more just... tired. Avenged Sevenfold wrote their song, M.I.A., to try to give some perspective of the toll that war takes on the psyche of a soldier, portraying the singer looking back on the horrors that he's seen and perpetrated himself. Metallica's One is about a soldier who was left stuck inside his own head after the injuries he sustained at war left him blind, deaf, and unable to move. They spliced scenes from the film meta for Johnny Got His Gun into their music video to better hit their point home, and ultimately bought the rights to the film in order to continue to show their video. And Muse's most recent album, Drones, is a concept album that follows the main character's journey, having his humanity and identity basically stripped away as he was indoctrinated into the military to become a killing machine in Psycho, leading to his eventual defection and victory over his enemies.//

Jono was making a mental note, next time they had a class about war, he was bringing the kitten.

Hannibal had not brought a cat, but he had brought food and drink? There was coffee and tea, and a number of pastries that he waved the students at. He'd taken a small tart and a cup of coffee for himself to share with Jono. "So, how do you feel these songs reflect or are affected by the wars of their times? What songs about war do you know, and which do you relate to best? What, in your opinion, should a song on the topic involve?"

Comments

Sign in!

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

At war!

Re: Sign in!

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante

Re: Sign in!

[thewrathofkaan]

Roscoe

Listen to the lecture!

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

About war! Possibly actually longer to finish than some wars have been.

Re: Listen to the lecture!

[that_oldsaying]

...

...

Well, Alluka certainly lost track of the lecture about halfway through. She spent the second half of the lecture adjusting Mr. Bubbles' new necktie and daydreaming.

Re: Listen to the lecture!

[crimson_sister]

Most of the music sounded quite strange to Lucille, and war was not a subject she had considered much. She had considered it a necessary evil and proof of the destructive nature of humanity. Grief, anger and despair were emotions she was familiar with though, and that was something she could hear in some of the pieces played.

Discuss!

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

War! And what it is good for. (Absolutely nothing.) Or, alternatively, discuss those things that Hannibal told you to discuss. That's good, too.

Re: Discuss!

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante knew... Fortunate Son, that U2 track, and he was pretty sure one of these had been covered by the Pogues at some point. Most of the classical stuff, he just kinda ignored out of hand, though the drums at the start had him thinking.

"Didn't A Perfect Circle do some song on marching like sheep?" he said. "That one's good." He shrugged. "I don't know about what's supposed to go in these things. I'm not big on military crap, so the patriotic ones don't work for me. I can get the anti-war ones that are all 'this shit fucked me up', but the flowers and hugs ones, not so much."

Re: Discuss!

[furnaceface]

//Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums,// Jono said immediately, snapping his fingers. //There's a good one, yes. The rhythmic marching beat really lends itself well to the soothing vocals and the bitter lyrics. And 'go back to sleep' says volumes about the blind eye they feel people as a whole are turning to the things going on in the world around them.//

He inclined his head a little, //For what it's worth, the patriotic songs don't really do anything for me, didn't even when I was a soldier. Some people don't buy into it for those reasons at all.//

Re: Discuss!

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

"It's notable that many of the 'flowers and hugs' songs were composed by those who had never seen war," Hannibal said, slightly dry. "Bellini, for example, spent his life in the comfort of academia and the upper crust; the people commissioning his operas came from similar worlds. It's easy to romanticize something you have no chance of experiencing."

Re: Discuss!

[thewrathofkaan]

"There's 'Holiday' by Green Day," Roscoe suggested. "I like the sarcasm in that one. It's cool when artists throw in beats or samples that sound like they could be super pro-government but then undermine them with the lyrics."

Re: Discuss!

[furnaceface]

//Does an excellent job of stirring up a certain mood just to turn around and spit in the face of it, doesn't it?// Jono gave a nod. //There were quite a few of them over the course of and in the wake of the Iraq War, with a lot of artists feeling betrayed and disillusioned by the things that the government was telling them. Basically any war has them, of course. So long as there are people fighting for somebody else's cause, there'll be those who choose to use song as a platform to spit in the face of it.//

Re: Discuss!

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

"I'm not familiar with that particular song, but that sort of sly, multi-layered storytelling lends itself well to political statements," Hannibal agreed.

Re: Discuss!

[intotheout]

"How about songs from musicals?" Tip asked. "There's Glory from meta for Pippin. Or probably about half the tracks from meta for Hair."

Tip loved Hair. It had some deeply sarcastic songs about all sorts of things: war, race, the environment, love. . . . And Pippin was supposed to get a revival with a black woman as the Leading Player, which Tip had been super excited about -- but then the Boov invaded and destroyed Broadway. Still, she and her mom knew all the songs.

Re: Discuss!

[furnaceface]

//Musicals absolutely count,// Jono replied, nodding, //though I'll admit I'm not as well-versed in most of those as I could be, I know there are a good many that touch on war and the effect it has on those who are involved in it. Even something that, musically speaking, seems as light at a glance as meta for Cabaret is, when you look at the way the narrative ties the songs together, actually about the rise of the Nazis in Berlin before World War II. Musicals are an interesting medium for telling those stories. They help to put perspective to the stories in a less figurative narrative than many songs on their own do.//

Re: Discuss!

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

"The modern successors to much of opera," Hannibal said, smiling. "A good choice. I imagine there are numerous songs from meta for Les Miserables as well that would fit."

Re: Discuss!

[thewrathofkaan]

"Good choice," Roscoe whispered, smiling at her. "And a few from meta for South Pacific, too."

Re: Discuss!

[crimson_sister]

Lucille sipped her tea.

"Obviously the aria is most familiar to me, even though I have never listened to opera before. And it's no surprise that war would be romanticized. It makes for dramatic stories, and inspires young men," she paused, then added: "and women, I assume, to join the army. It seems to me that in the past century the music describes the suffering and the injustice of wars rather than the heroic side. Would that be right?"

Re: Discuss!

[furnaceface]

//That seems like a fair assessment,// Jono agreed, nodding. //People are increasingly aware of what's going on in the world around them, and besides that, wars have gotten far more impersonal. There's not much heroic about pressing a button from a thousand miles away to kill your enemy.//

Re: Discuss!

[hexentotchen.livejournal.com]

The last two selections made Hanna most definitely twitchy. Knowing that that was the fate she would've had if it hadn't been for her father was more than a little disturbing.

"I know these. 99 Luftballoons. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4Dcd1aUcE) Um. All These Things I've Done. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PlNJU7qBaU&list=FLkMTLLLeMrSWhcFphADe3tA&index=14), which isn't exactly a war song, but isn't exactly-- not." She fidgeted, hair shielding her face. "I think war songs can have different aims; the Cold War songs acknowledged that no one wins a nuclear war. And the other, I think, talking about comradeship, the need to stand together." She blew out a breath and said, "This is a difficult topic. I liked the drums, I love action, but songs glorifying violence... They are selling something."

Re: Discuss!

[furnaceface]

//Selling something for somebody who more often than not will never have anything to do with the actual fighting,// Jono agreed, sounding tired. //It's difficult to condone the ones that glorify it, especially having seen the effects of war in person.//

Talk to the teachers!

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

Once they ping in.

Re: Talk to the teachers!

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

Hannibal is here! Drinking coffee and being much less traumatized than his partner.

Re: Talk to the teachers!

[furnaceface]

After the lecture was over, when he wasn't participating actively in the conversation, Jono was a bit more quiet than usual, today. War was ugly as hell. He'd fought in more than one, had seen the immediate fallout of several, he knew exactly how ugly it could be.

He felt old, today.

OOC

[never-dull.livejournal.com]

Shannon: .... Believe it or not, the songs I linked to were only half of what I had gathered for today's lecture. I pared it down a lot. I was going to do a 'special mentions' section here in the OOC thread, but it's one in the morning so you get what you get. :D