Sally Beamish premieres music for Remembrance
Sally Beamish collaborated on piece with John McCarthy, who was held hostage in Beirut for nearly five years.
A new musical piece by the well-known Quaker composer Sally Beamish was premiered at a Songs of Protest concert on Remembrance Sunday.
A Knock on the Door uses two choirs representing detainees and interrogators, to explore how torture damages all involved.
It premiered at Birmingham Town Hall on 13 November after being commissioned by the Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture (Q-CAT), who work to address how torture wounds the souls of tortured, torturers and the society which condones it.
With the help of John McCarthy, who was held hostage in Beirut for nearly five years, and a libretto written by Peter Thomson, Sally Beamish has composed a piece lasting about twenty-five minutes, with an understated, conversational style.
A Knock on the Door can be sung by groups with little musical background, and Q-CAT hope that Quaker meetings and other groups will take it up.
Sally Beamish, who was featured in the Proms this year, said: ‘This commission was extremely challenging, and approaching the subject profoundly uncomfortable.
‘An important factor was to emphasise that torture causes deep and lasting damage both to the victim and to the perpetrator, and that all humans are vulnerable to finding themselves in circumstances where they might become either victim or oppressor.’
Juliet Morton of Q-CAT said: ‘Torture encompasses much more than the victims and the perpetrators due to its illegal nature – structures of the nation become warped because of the involvement of judges, doctors, guards and so on.
‘As well as the impact on victims of torture we want to raise concern for the spiritual and mental welfare of the perpetrators of torture, and those in the chain of command, as they too are damaged to the core of their being by its use.’
Copies of A Knock on the Door will be available from Edition Peters later this year.
Comments
Please login to add a comment
