Image (2005)
for piano solo
Image was commissioned by the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music of The Catholic University of America, Murry Sidlin, Dean, as part of the 2005 President’s Concerts. For this concert, entitled “Songs of the Forgotten War,” 19 Washington area composers submitted one-minute musical reflections, each on one of the 19 bronze sculptures of young soliders that comprise the Korean War Memorial.
As I wrote for the program notes of this concert, one can imagine the young man’s thoughts moving between the bone chilling cold and fear of death, which is as thick in the air as the drenching rain. For a moment his mind seizes upon the comfort of a fleeting image of home and family, but the invisible threat pulls him back into the reality of the patrol. Dwight Eisenhower said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” The unanswered question is why the youth of the world are asked to shoulder this horrid enterprise.
—Robert Gibson
duration: ca. 1:00