It is a shadow that still looms 100 years later, as Australia gears up to mark the Anzac centenary next year.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But this year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War in Europe, and as we prepare to remember the men who fell and the people left behind, Canberrans will have the chance to learn about what happened to the music of the world as the war raged on.
This year's Canberra International Music Festival, titled The Fire and the Rose, will focus on the lost works of the many composers who died or were traumatised by the world wars. The program, which includes both new works and old favourites, is the product of years of research by director Chris Latham who, after six years at the helm, is putting together his last festival.
He said the program, while focused on war, was really about peace.
''World War I basically destroyed classical music, and what somehow survived the initial cataclysm was then wiped out by World War II,'' he said.
''We lost performers and composers in droves, but in fact the real damage was done to the living.
''The surviving composers came home deeply traumatised, and wrote music that they hoped would bring catharsis and release, but in doing so lost their audience, who needed a different kind of music to grieve to.''
To mark the Great War centenary, the festival, which runs over nine days in May, will bring 100 composers' lost works back to life.
Among them will be works by Australians Frederick Septimus Kelly and Arthur Benjamin, who composed a wartime violin sonata that has not been performed in Australia since the 1920s.
As well as well-known reflective works by Bach, Mozart and Brahms performed in the Albert Hall and the Fitters Workshop, there will be several contemporary or newly commissioned works by Nigel Westlake, Elena Kats-Chernin and Peter Sculthorpe, among others.
Latham said the title of the festival spoke to ''a balance between passion and love, that ultimately informs wisdom''.
''I wish to bring all of these forgotten figures back to life - to build a bridge across the river that separates us from them … The music they wrote, and the sense of the music they might have written if they had lived, will come together in this festival.''
The festival program will be launched on Thursday night at the Fitters Workshop in Kingston.
The Canberra International Music Festival runs from May 9 to 18.