Before the Hapless Stars (6’)

Program Notes:

Before the Hapless Stars is based on the poems of Wildfred Owen, a British officer in WWI. Owen sought to document the horrors of the war in his poetry as a deterrent to future armed conflicts, and this piece seeks to do the same. We start by joining Owen in the trenches where he’s scribbling poetry whilst bombs drop. Then we delve into his mind as he is haunted by a scene he witnessed on the battlefield — a man seeming to drown in air because he couldn’t get his gas mask on in time. Owen and the other soldiers press on, but they cannot shake the ghost of this scene. And although the inexorable march of war cannot be stopped, it is the sound of the poet’s witnessing that rings in our ears in the end.