Morning Heroes is a choral symphony by the English composer Arthur Bliss. The work received its first performance at the Norwich Festival on 22 October 1930, with Basil Maine as the speaker/orator. Written in the aftermath of World War I, in which Bliss had performed military service, Bliss inscribed the dedication as follows:
"To the Memory of my brother Francis Kennard Bliss and all other Comrades killed in battle"
The work sets various poems:
- Homer, The Iliad, passages from Book VI (translation of W Leaf) and Book XIX (translation of Chapman)
- Walt Whitman, "Drum Taps"
- Wilfred Owen, "Spring Offensive"
- Li Tai Po
- Robert Nichols, "Dawn on the Somme"
The extracts are spoken by a narrator and sung by a large choir. Juxtaposing the harsh images of trench warfare with the epic heroes of Ancient Greece, the parallels Bliss draws are essentially romantic, and the work as a whole has been criticised as being rather complacent. Bliss himself said that he suffered from a repeating nightmare about his war experiences and that the composition of Morning Heroes helped to exorcise this.
Read more about Morning Heroes: Movements, Recordings
Famous quotes containing the words morning and/or heroes:
“The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven’s pavement; it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Decisive inventions and discoveries always are initiated by an intellectual or moral stimulus as their actual motivating force, but, usually, the final impetus to human action is given by material impulses ... merchants stood as a driving force behind the heroes of the age of discovery; this first heroic impulse to conquer the world emanated from very mortal forces—in the beginning, there was spice.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)