Equal Voices

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King

Music: Sally Beamish

Text: ‘An Equal Voice’ by Andrew Motion, with additional text taken from the ‘Song of Solomon’.

PART ONE: Prelude

1. Chorale 1: Whither is thy beloved gone? choir

2. Behind the lines    baritone

3. I sought him   soprano

4. Admirable order  baritone, soprano

PART TWO: Pastorale with Seascape

1. Pastorale orchestra

2. A distant lark baritone, choir

3. Seascape orchestra

4. Like granite rocks baritone

5. Chorale 2: Many waters soprano, choir

PART THREE: Idyll

Behold thou art fair soprano, baritone

PART FOUR: Scherzo

1. The place was full of men (with Kyrie) soprano, choir

2. I could feel the bullets soprano, baritone, choir

3. Then trembling began soprano, baritone, choir

4. The hate room

5. See, your eyes are already heavy soprano

6. Chorale 3: Set me as a Seal choir

PART FIVE: Paean

1. Who is she?  choir

2. I am quiet and healthy baritone

3. I found him whom my soul loveth  soprano

4. Interlude orchestra

5. Chorale 4:  The winter is passed choir

The work is in five movements. The powerful poem An Equal Voice is full of the haunting images associated with the battlefield. It describes the aftermath of war – the damage inflicted on the psyche of men trained to kill, yet unprepared for the horrors they are forced to encounter.

I wanted to counteract this bleakness with some element of redemption – albeit as a yet unachieved vision for the future. I chose the Song of Solomon from the Old Testament, because it reminds us that love is our natural state, and that we are constantly searching for connection with each other; but over and again find ourselves distanced by conflict – not only in war, but in our daily lives. Separation from the Beloved is a theme which recurs often in Middle Eastern poetry.

Equal Voices centres on four very simple chorales, all using texts from the Song of Solomon. Material for movements 1,2,4 and 5 is taken from the chorale appearing either at the beginning or the end of each movement. The central movement (3) is a love duet, based on the ancient French folksong L’Homme Armé (the armed man), which has been used so often by many composers as a basis for the Mass.

Most of the text from Andrew Motion's poem is taken from first-hand accounts contained in Ben Shephard's book 'A War of Nerves', which also contains this statement:

We hear more from doctors than patients. However hard he tries, the historian cannot even the account, cannot give the patients an equal voice, because most of them chose not to recount their experiences.

In the context of the music, though, the title also signifies the dual texts – one describing war, and one love – and the equal male and female voices of the soloists and choir.

Sally Beamish 2014

Andrew Motion writes: The poem 'An Equal Voice' appears as part of a series of war poems called 'Laurels and Donkeys' in my collection The Customs House. Like several others in the series, it is a kind of collaboration - a 'found poem', if you like - in the sense that it combines (and sometimes slightly alters) material that I found in existing books: most of it derives from 'A War of Nerves.  Soldiers and Psychiatry 1914-1944' by Ben Shephard, and other parts from 'Shell-shock' by Anthony Babington. I am indebted to both these authors.

The subject of the poem is what used to be called 'shell shock' and is now usually known as 'post traumatic stress disorder' or simply 'PTSD', and the words are mostly quotations from soldiers and others who have been afflicted with this condition. I chose to assemble the poem in this way because I thought it would be an affront to the sufferers if I as a non-combatant had presumed to write about their experience as if it were my own. I have arranged and combined the material so that it tells a story that recurs with tragic and dismaying frequency through the course of the last century and into our own.

Equal Voices was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, with support from Susie Thomson; and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra;

to commemorate the centenary of the start of the First World War. It was first performed at the Barbican, London, on November 2nd 2014, by the LSO and LSO Chorus (director Simon Halsey) conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, with soloists Marcus Farnsworth and Shuna Scott Sendall.

TEXT

‘An Equal Voice’ by Andrew Motion

Text in italics is from the Song of Solomon/liturgy

PART ONE: Prelude

I.1. Chorale 1

Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee. Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women?

I.2. Behind the lines

War from behind the lines is a dizzy jumble.

Revolving chairs, stuffy offices, dry-as-dust

reports, blueprints one day and the next –

with the help of a broken-down motor car

and a few gallons of petrol – marching men

with sweat-stained faces and shining eyes,

horses straining and plunging at the guns,

white sweat-clouds drifting beneath them,

and piles of bloody clothes and leggings

outside the canvas door of a field hospital.

At the end of the week there is no telling

whether you spent Tuesday going over

the specifications of a possible laundry

or skirting the edge of hell in an automobile.

I. 3.  I sought him

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.

I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.

The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?

I. 4. Admirable order

There were some cases of nervous collapse

as the whistle blew on the first day of battle.

In general however it is perfectly astonishing

and terrifying how bravely the men fight.

From my position on rising ground I watched

one entire brigade advancing in line after line,

dressed as smartly as if they were on parade,

and not a single man shirked going through

the barrage, or facing the rapid machine-gun

and rifle-fire that finally wiped them out.

I saw with my own eyes the lines advancing

in such admirable order quickly melt away.

Yet not a man wavered, or broke the ranks

or made any attempt to turn back again.

PART TWO: Pastorale with Seascape

II. 1 Pastorale

II. 2. A distant lark

A soft siffle, high in the air like a distant lark,

or the note of a penny whistle, faint and falling.

But then, with a spiral, pulsing flutter, it grew

to a hissing whirr, landing with ferocious blasts,

with tremendous thumps and then their echoes,

followed by the whine of fragments that cut

into the trees, driving white scars into their trunks

and filling the air with torn shreds of foliage.

The detonation, the flash, the heat of explosion.

And all the while fear, crawling into my heart.

I felt it. Crawling into me. I had to set my teeth

and steadied myself, but to no avail. I clutched

the earth, pressing against it. There was no one

to help me then. O how one loves mother earth.

II. 4. Seascape

II. 5.  Like granite rocks

One or two friends stood like granite rocks

round which the seas raged, but very many

other men broke in pieces. Everyone called it

shell-shock, meaning concussion. But shell-

shock is rare. What 90% get is justifiable funk

due to the collapse of the helm of self-control.

You understand what you see but cannot think.

Your head is in agony and you want relief for that.

The more you struggle, the more madness creeps

over you. The brain cannot think of anything at all.

II.6. Chorale 2

I don’t ask you what you feel like but I tell you

because I have been like you. I have been ill as you

and got better. I will teach you, you will get better.

Try and keep on trying what I tell you and you will.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

PART THREE: Idyll

Behold, thou art fair, my love: behold, thou art fair;

Thine eyes are as doves.

Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant:

Also our couch is green.

The beams of our house are cedars,

And our rafters are firs.

I am a rose of Sharon,

A lily of the valleys.

As a lily among thorns,

So is my love among the daughters.

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood,

So is my beloved among the sons.

I sat down under his shadow with great delight

And his fruit was sweet to my taste.

He brought me to the banqueting house,

And his banner over me was love.

Stay me with raisins, comfort me with apples:

For I am sick of love.

A garden enclosed is my sister, my bride;

A spring suppressed, a fountain sealed.

Thy shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits;

Henna with spikenard plants,

Spikenard and saffron,

Calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense;

Myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.

Thou art a fountain of gardens,

A well of living waters,

And flowing streams from Lebanon.

Behold, thou art fair, my love.

PART FOUR: Scherzo

IV. 1.  The place was full of men

The place was full of men whose slumbers were morbid,

titubating shell-shockers with their bizarre paralyses

and stares, their stammers and tremors, their nightmares

and hallucinations, their unstoppable fits and shakings.

Each was back in his doomed shelter, when the panic

and stampede was re-enacted among long-dead faces,

or still caught in the open and under fire. This officer

was quietly feasting with imaginary knives and forks;

that group roamed around clutching Teddy Bears;

one man stripped to his underclothes and proclaimed

himself to be Mahatma Gandhi; another sat cramped

in a corner clutching a champagne cork; one chanted,

with his hands over an imaginary basket of eggs, Lord

have mercy on us, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Kyrie Eleison

Christe eleison

Kyrie eleison

IV. 2.  I could feel the bullets

I could feel the bullets hit my body. I could feel

myself being hit by gunfire and this is what made me

sit up and scream. What I saw round me were others

walking with the bent and contorted spines of old age,

or moving without lifting their legs but vibrating them

on the ground. All equally unfortunate, filled with sadness.

Dead friends gazed at them. Rats emerged from the cavities

of bodies.

IV. 3.  Then trembling began

Then trembling began, and losing control of legs:

you never dreamt of such gaits. One fellow cannot hold

his head still or even stand except with incessant jerking.

Instantly the man across the aisle follows suit. In this way

the infection spreads in widening circles until the whole

ward is jerking and twitching, all in their hospital blues,

their limbs shaking and flapping like the tails of dogs.

IV.4.  The hate room

Naturally it can save a good deal of time if men,

before battle, have pictures from the Hate Room hung

in their minds of things the enemy have already done,

waiting to be remembered. Starving people for instance

and sick people and dead people in ones and heaps,

with bodies all bearing witness to hideous cruelties.

Compulsory mourning is no longer recommended

whereby the hospital confines a man for three days

alone in a darkened room and orders him to grieve

for dead comrades. But other cures must be attempted,

and in some cases men even wish to return to their duty.

IV. 5. See, your eyes are already heavy

See, your eyes are already heavy. Heavier and heavier.

You are going into a deep, deep sleep. A deep, far sleep.

You are far asleep. You are fast asleep. You have no fear.

IV. 6.  Chorale 3

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death.

PART FIVE: Paean

V. 1. Chorale 1 (reprise)

Who is she that looketh forth as the morning,

Fair as the moon,

Clear as the sun,

Terrible as an army with banners?

V. 2.

I am quiet and healthy but cannot bear being away

from England. I have been away too long and seen

too many things. My best friend was killed beside me,

I have a wife and two children and I have done enough.

I thought my nerves were better but they are worse.

The first fight, the fight with my own self, had ended.

I may be ready to fight again but I am not willing.

I am in urgent need of outdoor work and would be glad

to accept a position as a gamekeeper at a nominal salary.

My best friend walked back into my room this morning,

shimmering white and transparent. I saw him clearly.

He stood at the foot of my bed and looked right at me.

I asked him, What do you want? What do you want?

Eventually I woke up and of course I was by myself.

V. 3.

It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.

I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.

V. 4. INTERLUDE

V. 5. Chorale 4

The winter is passed, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in the land.

‘An Equal Voice’, from the collection ‘The Customs House’, is reproduced here with kind permission from Faber and Faber Ltd.