The Hannaford Street Silver Band stands with all Canadians in observing a moment of silence on November 11 to mark the sacrifice of the many who have fallen in the service of their country and to acknowledge the courage of those who still serve.
Please take a moment to reflect and listen to the piece Reconciliation from the HSSB recording Voices on High.
RECONCILIATION for TTBB Chorus and Flugelhorn (Dr. Stephen Chatman)
HSSB with the Amadeus Choir, Solo Flugelhorn, Stuart Laughton
A setting from Drum Taps by Walt Whitman, was commissioned by the HSSB for a Remembrance Day concert. The strong emotion of Whitman’s text, a reconciliation between a soldier and his dead enemy, is reflected in the stark simplicity of the music. Sombre flugelhorn calls in counterpoint with a choral hymn-like homophony of parallel root position triads builds in intensity to a high climax. This loud penultimate phrase. “touch lightly with my lips”, immediately precedes a hushed but peaceful denouement on the final words, “the white face in the coffin’.”
-Stephen Chatman
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be
utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
again, and ever again, this soil’d world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin-I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the
coffin.
Walt Whitman