Fallen Soldiers
- In Memoriam Jehan Alain

An intense empathy for those dead or dying for the supposed good of others…

In late October 2005 I was listening to a news programme on the radio, and was struck by one item about how soldiers serving in or returned from Iraq were decidedly unhappy to learn that they were likely to be sent back to that dangerous country after a year or so on home territory. I at once felt a great empathy with them and all who give or risk giving their lives in service, and at once had a very strong urge to compose some piece called Fallen Soldiers. All I was sure about was the title. Over a day or two I came to feel that this would be a work for organ and three trumpets, and so set about this on my sequencer program on my computer.

The first thing I did was to take an extant MIDI file of an organ piece to use as a starting template for the practical details of on-screen layout. It so happened that the organ piece that came first to hand was the 8th movement of The Great Wilderness, which is titled Contemplation — On the Loss of a Fellow Climber. I then realized that an adaptation of this movement to incorporate the three trumpets would work very well as the new work that I wanted to create.

The new work has the odd bar added here and there to give the trumpets a little more space to 'speak', but it's basically the same music. Jehan Alain is a composer whose music has connections with my own, and he was shot down on the battlefield in World War 2 in 1940 — so I, born in 1942 and feeling in a way to have taken over from where he left off, particularly thought of him in producing this new / not-quite-so-new work.

Please note that while producing the score from the MIDI file I amended a few details, so there are a few small differences in the final version on score as compared with the recorded MIDI realization that you can hear on YouTube.