Notes from the front: music, words and images of the great war

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Overview

Notes from the Front is a project distinguished by its original and innovative multi-disciplinary approach, which assembles arrangements of popular war songs of the period and original new music by Pordenone’s Zerorchestra with a chronologically complete, thematic review of film footage shot dal vero (“from life”) in war zones by Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and American cameramen. The visual material is set against readings of extracts from diaries kept by soldiers from the two armies. The various sources – musical, cinematic, and autobiographical – are combined to create a unique emotional experience, which simultaneously recounts the war, sheds light on propaganda techniques, compares them with soldiers’ accounts, and puts a modern slant on the music of the time inspired by the war.