We’ve no houses any more

The first Christmas song of this year is an unusual one. It does not speak of peace, love, light or hope. It is a song filled with anger an0d despair, calling for vengeance, agitated, and understandable only within the wartime context in which it was conceived.

On 7 December 1915, to be exact. The second Christmas since the outbreak of the Great War was approaching, and nothing suggested that the conflict would end soon. Large parts of France were occupied by the German Army, and air raids over Paris were frequent. Claude Debussy was fifty three; he was too old to serve at the front, and he could not take on any office or civilian work because he was ill; he was due to undergo surgery the very next day. It pained him that he could contribute nothing more than music.

That afternoon he composed what would become his last song, Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons [Christmas Song of the Children Who No Longer Have Homes]. The text, also his, gives voice to children who have lost their homes and their parents and who are going hungry. Children who have seen the enemy burn down the school and the church, the teacher and the beggar who had taken shelter there. The children ask for bread, for vengeance, that Christmas may never return to German homes, and that France may win the war. How terribly sad that children should lose their innocence in such a dreadful way! The text calls for vengeance for French, Belgian, Serbian and Polish children, and apologises if it forgets any others. And yes, it did forget at least the Armenian children: while Debussy was writing his song, Armenians were suffering the genocide. The composer was among the public figures who became involved against the tragedy, and Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons was premiered in 1916 at a charity concert in aid of the victims, a concert in which Komitas’s Antouni was also performed.

I leave you with Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons, performed by Robin Tritschler and Malcolm Martineau, and next week I will share with you a more soothing Christmas song.

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