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Once He Was a Gunner

John Young

Programme notes

Once He Was a Gunner is a radiogenic electroacoustic-documentary work based on the Second World War memories of my father, Alexander Young. Born in Seaton Delaval (Northumberland, England) in 1920, as a child he emigrated with his parents to New Zealand. In 1941 he was conscripted as a gunner in the 5th Field Regiment of the New Zealand Division of the 8th Army and served continuously until 1945. He was at key moments of the New Zealanders’ North African and Italian campaigns such as El Alamein, Minqar Qaim, Monte Cassino, Orsogna, and the Senio River. In Italy the severe, wet and freezing winters of 1943 and 1944 meant that many units of both allied and German forces stayed in civilian homes. It was at one such location in Central Italy that my father met his future wife — my mother — and the work is based on an interview that I carried out with him after revisiting that place in 2005. In the work the interview is presented as a series of vividly described recollections of people, events and places, from Bari to Trieste, connected and framed by an architecture of sound design aiming to evoke the unspoken emotions that lie behind strong memories. The events represented are not in strict chronological sequence, I wanted to offer them in the manner of memories revealed, perhaps through association or as a response to some unknown conversational seed. This is precisely how I grew up, with a patchwork of knowledge about my father’s wartime experiences — sometimes shocking, sometimes humorous. As was the case for many returning soldiers, he talked more about the war as time went on but, hearing these stories fifteen years after recording them, I was reminded of the extent to which the war — or, more precisely, memory of the war — was a current that ran like a river through our family life. For my father and mother, for my sisters and me, it was always there to remind us of why we were together. Once He Was a Gunner is a journey through one man’s experience of the war in Italy — living with civilians, moments of lucky escape, the fear, the camaraderie, the panacea of alcohol, and the sense of loss on returning home.

Once He Was a Gunner is in 26 linked sections.

[vii-23]


Once He Was a Gunner was realized in 2020 in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Laboratory at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK). It was first broadcast on October 3, 2020 during the Sound Lounge programme on Radio New Zealand Concert, and presented on March 17, 2022, in a 5.0 audiovisual version — with images provided by the National Library of New Zealand — at PACE Studio 1 of De Montfort University (Leicester, UK).

Premiere

  • October 3, 2020, Sound Lounge, Radio New Zealand Concert, New Zealand
  • Composer(s): John Young
  • Year of composition: 2020
  • Duration: 27:32
  • Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
  • Publisher(s): Ymx média
  • ISRC: CAD502411015, CAD502411030

Movements

Prelude

Sora Valley

The Canadian Club

First Civilians

Faenza

Flashback: El Alamein memory

Villanova

The truck

The shrapnel

Balsorano

What was his name, now?

The brickworks

Dov’è la Nuova Zelanda?

What the heck was his name, now?

The wrong way

Do you remember in Faenza?

Friendly fire

Senio River — nothing left

An open door

After Cassino

Found in Chicago

The Princess

April 1945

Trieste

Stretto

Returning