Music of wartime, music that aspires to peace. Music that seeks to soothe in times of conflict or to reconcile opposing forces.

Harmony is the key word in the great Symphony No. 1 “Concordia” by Canadian composer Samy Moussa, to whom MITO SettembreMusica dedicates a portrait with a pair of concerts. Composed for the city of Montreal on the occasion of its 375th anniversary, the work draws on the city’s motto “Concordia salus” – that is, well-being through harmony – which, according to the composer, means a “union of hearts, a metaphor for the orchestra and for music itself.”

A celebration of virtue’s triumph over the forces of evil, Antonio Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha Triumphans was composed to commemorate the Republic of Venice’s victory over its historic enemies during the siege of Corfu in 1716. Meanwhile, The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace by Karl Jenkins (1999) is a secular mass dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo War, and makes use of texts from various cultures and historical periods, including the medieval L’homme armé, the Koran, sacred Christian texts, and poems by authors such as Rudyard Kipling and Alfred Tennyson.

“Inextinguishable,” like humanity’s struggle against destruction and death, is the title of Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, composed between 1914 and 1916, as the world was being consumed by World War I. A multi-part concert featuring two choirs in the cities of Milano and Torino takes audiences on a musical journey featuring works by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Paul Hindemith and Arvo Pärt, which resembles a modern-day procession that is musical in form and, inevitably, spiritual in nature.