with our regular columnist, local musician Dr Michael Whiticker
IF we were to gather for a concert for peace today, what would it need to be? Loud and triumphant? Quiet and reflective? Grand in scale, or simple enough to fit into a small hall where strangers sit side by side and remember they belong to the same human family?
Perhaps the first question is not what the performers would play, but what would move you deeply enough to remain in a place of love, peace, and understanding for all people in the world.
What melody would soften the heart? What voice would remind you that every face carries joys, wounds, hopes, and fears much like your own? What rhythm would steady the mind before it rushes to judgement?
A true concert for peace may begin in silence. Not empty silence, but the kind that asks us to listen inwardly. Then from that stillness, music might rise gently — a cello line, a distant flute, a choir singing without words, voices blending beyond language, race, nation, or creed. Music has always known what politics forgets: harmony is made from difference, not sameness.
What would stop us in our tracks before acting unkindly or thoughtlessly toward those who seem different from us in some way? Perhaps not argument. Perhaps not slogans. Perhaps a song so honest that it makes cruelty feel impossible for a moment. A piece of music that reminds us that anger often hides pain, and fear often disguises itself as certainty.
In 1995, I wrote a chamber opera titled Love’s Blazing Fire, with a libretto by John Wregg for Sydney Metropolitan Opera. It told a story of love in difficult, almost impossible circumstances. There were only two characters: a Palestinian girl and an Israeli boy. One need not follow today’s headlines to know that the political troubles surrounding that land are ancient and unresolved.
Did performances of that work stop people in their tracks? Perhaps for some they did. Perhaps for an evening, perhaps for a lifetime. Art rarely changes the whole world in one stroke, but it can change a single heart, and a changed heart is no small event.
So what sort of music might help us live better now? Maybe music that does not flatter our divisions. Music that asks something of us. Music that awakens tenderness instead of outrage. Music that makes us hesitate before causing harm. Music that enlarges compassion.
A concert for peace today might end with no applause at all — only people leaving more slowly than they arrived, carrying a little more patience, a little more humility, and a renewed desire to be kind.
