Christopher Bowen’s latest work to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War One.

In August 2014 at the Sydney Town Hall, more than two hundred choristers (including children’s choir), a symphony orchestra and five internationally renowned soloists will perform a work that has been some years in the making.

The journey to create An Australian War Requiem began in 2012, when composer-conductor Christopher Bowen OAM proposed writing a work to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War One and of the Gallipoli Campaign. The Sydney University Graduate Choir subsequently commissioned Christopher, and librettist Pamela Traynor, to complete the work in time to mark the centenary in 2014.

The first step Pamela and Christopher needed to take was to determine the theme, the focus of the work, which would give the work its ‘heart’. Letters exchanged between young soldiers at the front and their mothers at home in Australia became the inspiration for the composition.

The Australian War Memorial holds many hundreds of these letters and poems which revealed the horror of this war, the heartbreak and the love between these young men and their mothers.  This then defined the...