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"Children of Conflict" Peter Xifaras / Czech Symphony Orchestra — Orchestrated Empathy
"Children of Conflict"
Peter Xifaras
Czech Symphony Orchestra
Orchestrated Empathy
I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die.
To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men,
thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.
But they are murdered children all the same.
—Kurt Vonnegut
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
Beauty awakens the soul to act."
—Dante Alighieri
Peter Xifaras has done a simple thing. This is a 20-minute EP. There is an orchestra, a little bit of narration, and a singer from some foreign land. Oh yes! There are six videos that go with the six short movements of this little piece of orchestral music. He uses some modalities to evoke a foreign feeling. And the subjects of this small work are children. The setting is any of a few war-torn countries in the current news. And this little piece will break your heart. It is supposed to do that, and you should listen to it in order to have your heart broken for 20 short minutes. After that, you will never watch the war described in numbers on TV without feeling the loss of children lost in those numbers.
When adults wage war, children perish.
—Elie Wiesel
We were children
Thrust into war
And once it ends
What will we become?
Why the hell would you subject yourself to such emotion? As Jesse said while healing the sick in Greaser's Palace: "If ya feel ya healed." The news has taught how to feel less and less. The valiant children dying as heroes have given the world the gift to be able to celebrate our wars in patriotic ceremonies. Yeah, but that doesn't change a thing. As Kurt Vonnegut reminded us before he died, "But they are murdered children just the same."
Every war is a war against children.
—Eglantyne Jenn
So I am writing about this little piece of music and its videos because it is better to feel than to embrace the little death in numbers and statistics of war that we are told to see as the scoreboard of victory. No sides have been taken here, but for the advocacy of dead children and the lives of those who have lost their childhoods to the hell of a war before they even learned to throw a ball.
The only way to eliminate war is to love our children
more than we hate our enemies.
—Golda Meir
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask:
“Mother, what was war?”
—Eve Merriam
It is so very easy to talk about war. Nobody is in favor of it. It feels noble to express the most obvious sentiment and call that wisdom. I don't know the answer to any conflict, but I have taken the 20-minute challenge to see and hear and feel the losses of dead children and even worse the "Children of Conflict" living through total madness — gassed with the inevitable cloud of lies that have always defined the onset of war.
In war, truth is the first casualty.
—Aeschylus
When I can't bear to say what needs to be said, or when I just don't have the words, I look to better wisdom like Aeschylus, Elie Wiesel, Eglantyne Jenn, Kurt Vonnegut, Eve Merriam, Golda Meir, and Dante Alighieri. I even repeat their words in the same damn review if I feel I have to. We need to weep for the children, or we will become too dead inside to raise our own families without teaching them fear, bigotry, hatred, white nationalism, xenophobia, and a cultivated ignorance of the lives of our forefathers.
I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die.
To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men,
thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.
But they are murdered children all the same.
—Kurt Vonnegut
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
Beauty awakens the soul to act."
—Dante Alighieri
Beauty awakens the soul to act. Peter Xifaras and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra have made something beautiful to awaken your souls to act. What are you gonna do?
The following two paragraphs descript the composer's prior accomplishments and they were provided by the artist:
Peter Xifaras is music embodied. In his roles as a solo-artist, film-composer, guitarist, orchestrator, and producer, he has garnered praise for successfully crossing over musical boundaries. He is just as comfortable writing a piece for symphonic orchestra as he is laying down a wailing blues solo on guitar. Peter's music has been heard on hundreds of radio stations and has been on SiriusXM rotation for over a decade. As a multi-award winning artist, Peter's music has also topped Billboard's Classical and Crossover charts.
The diverse nature of Peter's genre-bending compositions has attracted a wide range of talented guest artists who frequently appear on his releases as well as his SymphoneX Orchestra® project. Peter recently recorded with the great legendary jazz-trumpeter Shunzo Ohno for an upcoming release, composed a 6 movement classical work for social justice recorded by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and is currently working on a concerto for classical guitar - all while getting ready to score the next feature-film produced by JawDoc productions.
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