Morning Heroes

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.