Mass of memory:
music heals battle scars

Report by Mark Kearney

By ACM Regional
04 April 2017

Picture: NONI HYETT

Requiems written for the First World War are commonplace.

Composers in the United Kingdom, France and even Russia have all used music to mourn the 37 million people who died during the so-called “Great War”.

But for Michael McNeill, it was conflict in the Pacific almost three decades later, the one that saw Western allies tangle with Japanese forces, that needed immortalisation in song.

Inspiration struck the American-born man at his computer in Bendigo, beside which a war medal is mounted to the wall.

Picture: NONI HYETT

The commendation for extraordinary bravery belonged to his father, marine bugler Frank Worthington McNeill, who was barely out of his teens when sent to fight on the shores of Iwo Jima, Japan, in 1945.

“It triggered my recollection that nothing of this sort (a requiem mass) had been written,” Mr McNeill said.

“We have films, music dealing with all manner of World War Two, but there was this one gap.”

The former high school music teacher set about penning Pacific Requiem, a mass interspersed with folk and children’s songs from each corner of the Pacific war: the United States, Japan and Australia.

Writing the requiem was a cathartic experience for the man who, after finishing its pie jesu, broke down in tears for 15 minutes.

Reflecting on his father’s experience at war – and the scourge of post-traumatic stress that still haunts his family – was something he often did since putting the finishing touches to the work.

“He, apparently, was a very gentle man - past tense,” Mr McNeill said of his father.

“Then he went away to war and for 36 days in Iwo Jima he transformed into something else.”

Mr McNeill still bears the scars of physical attacks the man dealt after returning from the front line.

His mother was also beaten.

Stories from the battle went some way to explaining the marine’s changed demeanour.

On one occasion, the older Mr McNeill was standing beside a friend when he turned to light a cigarette.

The hand he used to smoke was suddenly splotched with blood.

“(He) turned around and his friend wasn't there, no part of his friend was there,” Mr McNeill said.

His father also narrowly escaped death just moments after landing at Iwo Jima when the bugles he was carrying took the brunt of a Japanese bullet shower.

But despite being a work about conflict, the word ‘war’ does not appear in the requiem’s lyrics.

It was a composition to bond, not divide, Mr McNeill said.

“We are not Australians, we're not Americans, we're not Japanese. We're human beings who are sharing this recollection.”

Picture: NONI HYETT

Now his goal is to have the requiem performed in each of those three nations.

The composition was debuted in a performance at St Louis Cathedral in New Orleans last year, a city chosen for its World War Two museum.

Mr McNeill also flew to Darwin last month to see the requiem sung inside the city’s Uniting Church, a building made from war debris.

But staging a performance in Japan is proving more difficult.

Dozens of email and phone entreaties to choral groups in the Asian nation have not received a single response.

Mr McNeill believed it is shame at their involvement in the war that was deterring the Japanese.

“I think the Japanese need this more than we do,” he said.

“They have quite rightly got a lot of guilt to deal with and they're not handling it very well.”

Japanese-Australian pianist Hiroko Yasunori understands the dilemma.

The Melbourne pianist helped Mr McNeill translate Japanese songs built into the requiem, something she was moved to do because of a personal connection to the conflict: her uncle was a kamikaze pilot.

She also volunteers with Japanese war brides now living in Melbourne.

Her uncle’s death remained a source of confusion, rather than grief, for Ms Yasunori.

“He died to save our country but killed many American people,” she said.

“One way he was a hero but the other way he was a terrible enemy.”

It upset her wars were still being waged, saying it was irrational fears and anger that led people into war.

“I wish much more people feel love and harmony and live happily.”

A meeting with the daughter of a Japanese serviceman at last year’s New Orleans performance gave Mr McNeill hope the music would eventual be heard in the country.

“She thought it was beautiful and said, ‘The Japanese would love this’.”

But while music could ease suffering from war (Mr McNeill said the art form “soothed the savage beast”), it would not dissolve the scars soldiers and their families were left, including those of the Bendigo composer.

He only grew comfortable enough to speak with his father again in the elderly man’s final years.

“I would like to think that I've resolved a few things,” Mr McNeill said.

“Some things can’t be undone.”

“Music soothes the savage beast,

Picture: NONI HYETT

always has.”

Picture: NONI HYETT

Picture: NONI HYETT