A ‘mighty resolve’: The power of music to unite, console and galvanise

As loudspeakers blasted Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony through the city of Leningrad during its siege, the city’s defiance and resilience were captured in a way that words alone could not express. There are many powerful written accounts of Leningrad’s struggle but even now, 80 years on, Shostakovich’s work conveys the anguish, resistance, and emotion in a way only music can. In times of national trial, music has an extraordinary ability to capture and communicate emotion that transcends language and politics.

As we mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day this year, I am reminded again of this singular power. Music is not just a form of entertainment in times of crisis. It becomes a vessel for collective memory, hope, grief, and a range of emotion in between. During the Second World War, music was a vital force that carried Britain through its darkest hours, from the popular songs that kept spirits alive on the home front to the great orchestral works that spoke to deeper, more complex emotions.

I’d always known that to be an artist it is essential to be open to the world around you. However, while working on my new Violin Concerto, Angelus, I experienced firsthand how a composer can be guided, almost unconsciously, by our environment to allow the music to speak for itself. As I began the process of writing, I never had any intentions of capturing the geopolitical zeitgeist, but the mysterious osmosis that sculpts music can be a beautiful thing.

How did my new violin concerto, Angelus, come into being and how was it to be the unlikely vessel which expressed a fundamental shift in the world order? In the time I had to write it late last year, progress on the Violin Concerto had to be fast – and it was. The work duly began in intensely lyrical mode but was quite suddenly invaded by a loud, persistent and remorseless snare drum. Even as I was writing it I was surprised at my inclusion, and when I listened back, I was shocked by this insistent, repetitive rhythm cutting across the lyricism. Then it went on into the slow movement – and, yes, cut right back in during the last movement too. Then the titles began to appear to me. ‘Angelus’ for the whole work. For the three movements: ‘The Summoning’, ‘English Dawn’ and then finally, ‘Excalibur’. These titles full of the resonance of English history and mythology seemed to shock even me.

What was going on? The music is filled with an up surgent and radiantly affirmative energy, and the last movement in particular is overwhelmed by a remorseless march which, in its final seconds, becomes an all-out charge with a concluding coup de grace. It has about it the aura of a vast gathering of spiritual energies; the phrase ‘a mighty resolve’ came to my mind for the first time. Although written recently, the piece taps into something timeless — the same ‘mighty resolve’ that carried Britain through the trials of war to the celebrations of VE Day.

Then I began to relate this character of the music to what was going on around me in the wider world: Russia attacking Europe on our Eastern flank, the rise of Trump and the sudden, arrant discarding of the defence of the ‘free world'. The shift of the world order that was to follow could not have been anticipated but, on occasion, music can be prophetic.

Last year, we couldn’t have predicted where we are now, the defence of the US seemingly withdrawn from Europe for the first time in a century; an existential crisis brewing for Britain and the whole of Europe, and arguably the Western World. Now Europe – and Britain too – has to think hard about its survival, this unique vessel of liberal democracy.

VE Day reminds us that in the face of existential threat, a nation’s spirit can crystallise with extraordinary force. Music plays a vital role in this process: It unites, it consoles, and it galvanises. It speaks when ordinary words fail.

And a feature of these British Isles is that when our back is to the wall – just as during those attritional war years – we produce from nowhere ’a mighty resolve’. In our own uncertain times, music remains not just a reflection of events but a call to courage and solidarity. Angelus is my small offering to that tradition: a work born from a moment of upheaval, reaching towards hope.