ABSTRACT
British composer Laura Rossi (b. 1974) is perhaps best known for her new scores for silent films, including The Battle of the Somme and The Battle of the Ancre, and for a selection of early Shakespeare films that appeared in 1998 as Silent Shakespeare. Rossi is also the composer of scores for many recent films and was nominated for an Academy Award for her music for Unfinished Song (2012). In addition to receiving wide recognition and critical praise for her film music, Rossi has been heralded for her concert works that include chamber music, settings of songs by Gerald Manley Hopkins, and, most significant, Voices of Remembrance, a work for orchestra, choir, and spoken voices based on poems written during World War I. This chapter offers a close reading of Rossi’s Voices in the context of both her film scores and her other concert music; it analyses Rossi’s approaches to related topics across genres and her methods of creating music to accompany texts and testimonies of various natures that document the Great War.
