War Music

In his brilliant rendering of eight books of Homer's Iliad, Logue here retells some of the most evocative episodes of the war classic, including the death of Patroclus and Achilles's fateful return to battle, that sealed the doom of Troy. Compulsively readable, Logue's poetry flies off the page, and his compelling descriptions of the horrors of war have a surreal, dreamlike quality that has been compared to the films of Kurosawa. Retaining the great poem's story line but rewriting every incident, Logue brings the Trojan War to life for modern audiences.

This CD box set, released seventy years after World War II ended, contains music composed by those who were persecuted during that same war; any performance of these works was strictly forbidden at the time. Nineteen Dutch composers were deported to concentration camps of which only six survived the atrocities. Others went into hiding or they survived using fake identities. Almost all saw their musical career end inopportunely.

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To witness war is, in large part, to hear it. And to survive it is, among other things, to have listened to it–and to have listened through it.