Battle of Arras – World Premiere at Pordenone Silent Film Festival

Scoring ‘Battle of Arras’ by Laura Rossi
THE BATTLE OF ARRAS was filmed April 1917 by, Malins, McDowell & Raymond and released in June 1917. Having previously scored IWM films Battle of the Somme & Ancre, it’s been an honour to complete the trilogy of scoring these important historical films.

I scored The Somme for full Symphony Orchestra, Ancre for chamber orchestra and it seemed fitting for this film to score it for Choir & Chamber Ensemble (as this film has more footage of local people, more battalions and more of the aftermath, compared to the other films).

The UK has a great choral tradition with choirs in every town, so I hope to tour this with local choirs and ensembles performing live with film to bring this important historical film to local communities and help reach as many new audiences as possible through the live screenings.

RESEARCH

Having spent months working on Somme & Ancre and researching these films, as well as visiting the Somme Battlefields twice, I discovered when working on the Somme, my Great, great Uncle Fred (who I knew – he died when I was 10) was a stretcher bearer and may well be in these films. I have his diaries and retraced his footsteps across the battlefields. This close personal connection to the film and the battle and reading his diaries helped give me a deeper understanding of what it must have been like to be there and helped me to write it from the soldiers’ perspective.

Here’s an extract from my Uncle’s diary: The opening of the Arras film shows the destruction near Péronne caused by the German retreat.

My Uncle writes: “Entered Péronne, German’s in Full retreat. Streets all wrecked and trees thrown all about. Very busy”

A page later he writes:

“Up line for Big Push. Much work. Soaked through. Working 36 hrs in wet things. No dry place to sit anywhere. Noshelter. Heavy/Fritz shelling. Ten Casualties in Ambulance to- date. Awful conditions. Never felt more fed up. Mud knee deep.”

Musical Approach

This film has some very moving scenes as it shows the aftermath of war and so I felt it would work well with music that enhanced this. So my main aim with the score was to help provide a structure and help make the film more moving and engaging to watch.
I decided it would work well as a choral piece using poetry and text (in English, French and German) mainly written by the Soldiers’ who were there but a couple of poems I set are written by people back home. I also arranged a few songs as part of the score.

I also listened to IWM recordings of soldiers talking about their experiences of war, and found this incredibly moving tape of a soldier “Neyland” who was at Arras talking about the songs they sang and he breaks into song singing “When this wicked war is over” so I decided to use this for the end credits and wrote an orchestral accompaniment for it – it’s an incredibly powerful and poignant ending to the film.