Music and Remembrance at King’s

Music has always had an important role at major school events such as King’s Day and the Carol Service. Another occasion is the school’s commemoration of this year’s one hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War. Numerous Music Scholars made significant contributions. Two trumpeters, Andrew Gee and Henry Bowers, played the last post on three separate occasions during school services. The Chamber Choir gave their first performance of the year under the new leadership of Mr Allsop with an atmospheric rendition of Bainton’s And I Saw a New Heaven. In the afternoon, guests of the Foundation Development Office, including OVs and staff, past and present, attended a performance of Before The Daylight Fades Away which included Dani Brennan singing musical settings of Great War poems. Amongst these were Vera Brittain's Perhaps, set by Caz Besterman, and the Brennan and Caddigan wartime song The Rose of No Man's Land.

Remembrance Day itself involved many pupils participating in numerous events. Members of the Chamber Choir were invited to sing live in the BBC Hereford and Worcester studio in the morning. They sang a version of Keep the Home Fires Burning (listen again below) which the school choir had performed in an episode of BBC Radio 4’s The Archers, back in 2014. Marguerite Bullock spoke about her experiences with the school’s CCF and Michael Burgess talked about his time as a Cathedral Chorister. Michael then went off to sing with the Cathedral Choir at the Remembrance Service and he was later joined by Andrew Gee who played the Last Post at the War Memorial at 11.00 am in front of a very large crowd. In the evening Amy Heptinstall joined a choir, mostly comprised of professionals, to sing a Requiem Mass in the Cathedral.

“Where words fail, music speaks.” Hans Christian Anderson