The Orpheus choir, and the "End of Innocence"

I am usually reluctant to attend Remembrance Day proceedings. I am not merely jaded, but also skeptical of the commemorative impetus behind many official ceremonies that, in my opinion, celebrates war, rather condemning it. However, while visiting Toronto last month, I had the opportunity to attend the Orpheus Choir’s Remembrance Day concert, “The End of Innocence.” The choir’s slogan is “expect something different” and my sister, a choir member, had told me how the concert would involve a multimedia presentation and dramatic readings in addition to the music. So many Remembrance Day observances feel faded out after years of repetition, but this, as promised, was different – a poignant recognition of the day, and also among the most memorable and evocative concerts of my adult life.

The performance was impeccable. It was less a commemoration than a story of the First World War through image, drama, and music, mourning the end of the “age of innocence” by using music to create a wrinkle in time between the audience and the dramatized primary sources. Sandwiched between a prelude and postlude were images, music, and texts that juxtaposed consonance and dissonance, moving through the emotions of the period. The musical, visual, and textual selections of Robert Cooper, Joan Nicks, and Mary Barr braided together perfectly. For example, Edward Moroney’s “King and Country,” a medley of popular music from the period, reflected the upbeat mood following the armistice – and that is when the visuals moved from black and white images of the war to brightly coloured movie posters. Stratford Festival actors Bethany Jillard and Mike Shara executed a narration comprised of a series of letters and diary entries from the war – clearly selected after extensive research.

At times, the concert felt like it was a single piece, perhaps an oratorio with several composers, rather than a more traditional choral concert. Most of the characters lived in the narration; however, at one point, a young man rose from the chorus for a solo in Howard Goodall’s “Do Not Stand At My Grave.” Scarcely older than the soldiers who died in the war, the lyrics took on the air of his letter home to a family for whom he could never have truly died; most families could never have afforded to visit a grave overseas. Instead, their loved ones disappeared into the mud of an unknown place. How real could death be, without a tangible body? The chorus was a canvas for these sorts of characters; at times, the choir sat or knelt, with the book lights they used to see their music only slightly illuminating their faces. From my pew at the back of the church, they looked like they were praying.

After this praise, it may seem peculiar that my main criticism of the concert is actually its very premise: was World War One really the end of the “age of innocence”? This is, certainly, the assumption of the Canadian public – what we have been taught in high school history classes for generations, and what people during the war (to my knowledge) declared. Notably, however, we repeatedly make such assumptions that our era is exceptional. The program noted the Ottawa attack, just a few weeks previously, and I immediately thought about how the CBC portrayed that shooting as an unprecedented change. Given the colonial violence through which Canada was founded, the idea that Canada ever had its innocence is a tremendous erasure of history. Perhaps each successive war has been chipping away at “innocence” – in which case, since it did not exist in the first place, we are left with an ever-expanding vacuum.

Last year, I was a teaching assistant for History 102, Canada since Confederation. For the lecture on the First World War, the professor set up a slide show of photographs of some of the most gruesome parts of trench warfare: men with parts of their faces missing, severed limbs in the mud, that sort of thing. For the second half of the two-hour lecture period, he read a memoir (I have unfortunately forgotten the name or author) about life in the trenches. It was emotionally overwhelming, seeing those photographs while hearing about the experiences of a man, younger than our students, who faced a reality where he would be killed if he did not kill other men, often at close range. Neither the memoir nor the photographs spared any details – appropriately, since the goal of the lesson was to instill the horror of war in the minds of a group of young adults who, almost invariably, had only seen such images in video game animations. This was the most effective lecture about a war that I'd ever seen. However, in the tutorial following that lecture, some of my students reported having had nightmares. At least two had exited the lecture hall in tears. I wondered afterwards how to create a balance, showing students the horrors of war, but without so horrifying them that they might be reluctant to study history further.

My students comprise a very different demographic from the Orpheus choir members or audience. The audience for this concert was overwhelmingly white middle-aged people or seniors, seated in an Anglican church in an exclusive neighbourhood – this is standard for the Toronto choral scene. This group was very clearly moved, and I wish I could see how the young, multicultural students whom I have taught might react to such a concert. Most of my students are unversed in classical music, which might be the ticket to bringing the power of both war and peace into their understandings of history.

Just over a month later, the notes and images of this concert have not faded from my mind. Usually, I attend a choral concert expecting just that – a concert. In this case, I indeed experienced something different: a service, a haunting, a lesson, a reverie, and a collective fear of death and celebration of life.