Concert for Peace

An impossible work for an impossible peace, Schönberg’s Friede auf Erden was composed in Vienna in the early years of the 20th century. Twenty years later, the composer would describe it as ‘an illusion for mixed choir, an illusion, I know today; I thought it possible when I composed it in 1906, this pure harmony between men’.
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The other pieces are also appeals for peace composed during the most troubled periods in history. Schütz’s motet Verleih uns Frieden was written in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. Shostakovich’s Passacaglia dates from the early days of Stalinist terror, while Frank Martin’s was written in 1944. Finally, Poulenc’s luminous cantata Figure humaine, from 1943, is a veritable hymn to freedom.