Author Description

Or Shall We Die? was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus and was first performed in 1983. Although the text is divided into sections, the momentum of the words carries the music through without a break. Lyrical passages are constantly interrupted by more strident sounds creating a relentless sense of unease. The opening notes provide the thematic basis for what follows, and leitmotifs are established for the Woman and her daughter. Here the orchestration is warm and yearning, but many of the ideas that are now richly scored appear later in much sparer vein. The Woman is rudely curtailed by the chorus whose intervention heralds the first awesome words of the Man. The chorus pose the crucial test of wisdom -- Shall we pass, or shall we die? -- to harmony derived from the opening notes and now extended for the Man's account of the bombing of Hiroshima. He is repeatedly jostled by the chorus parodying a Victorian hymn complacently satisfied by the blessing of the aircrew prior to take-off. The barrage stops abruptly to reveal the Woman searching for her daughter amid the devastation. As the daughter dies, the chorus sings the Victorian hymn now sounding more like a Bach chorale. But once again the music is taken over by a militant ostinato. The inevitable progress is broken only by the questioning of the Woman. The opening music (now inverted) accompanies a return of the initial sentiments of the Woman and, as her family sleep, she awaits dawn with ever growing despair. Finally the couple join together to sing of the nature of science and its inadequacies. The chorus energetically endorse this in a garish setting of Blake's A Divine Image. The couple resume their duet, leading into the final Blake chorale. The chorus returns again and again to the notes of Or shall we die? but now singing the words Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. There is a half resolution but over the final notes there lies the inevitable question mark.