On June 5, 1944, as 2,500 members of the British 1st Special Service Brigade slowly made their way out of the harbour preparing for D-Day, 21-year-old bagpiper Bill Millin stood on the bow and played the Scottish folk melody The Road to the Isles. It was broadcast to the surrounding ships through a loudhailer, prompting what can only be described as improvised warship polyphony; two Royal Navy destroyers and several Free French vessels responded in kind, each using their loudhailers to broadcast a different national melody. On the eve of one of the biggest days in history, the English coast played host to surely one of the largest open-air concerts …

Nor was the music silenced by gunfire. Come D-Day on Sword Beach, Millin piped troops ashore as they all waded through the freezing water, playing Highland Laddie as the soldier behind him was fatally shot. Millin made it to the beach and was bewildered when his commanding officer requested The Road to the Isles. Amid a hail of gunfire, Millin marched up and down, piping requests. Fast-forward to September, and Millin was involved in another key operation: Market Garden and the seizing of Pegasus Bridge. Once again, his bagpipes accompanied their march across it, as 12 men lost their lives. It is said that German snipers did not kill Millin because they assumed he had gone mad.

Arromanches and the Mulberry Harbour, central to the Normandy campaign (photo: Jack Pepper)

Veterans who survived the campaign distinctly recalled the music, saying it gave them unique pride, hope and determination. Music played a key part in the Second World War – and the conflict in turn shaped music.

Look at Elizabeth Poston, who whilst working for the BBC embedded codes into the pieces broadcast, using the music to communicate hidden messages to resistance fighters on the Continent. A 70-something Vaughan Williams filled sandbags and pushed a wheelbarrow around Dorking, collecting scrap metal to make fighter aircraft; perhaps it was the tension of this period that fed his own increasingly expansive compositions. Walton was exempted from military service provided he score propaganda films; among the most notable was The First of the Few, which told the story of Spitfire designer RJ Mitchell, and gave rise to the rousing concert and radio favourite, Spitfire Prelude and Fugue. It’s interesting that so much of the music doesn’t carry the trauma of war, but rather aims to inspire and lift spirits.

Just as music played its role at the time, it has been a centrepiece of the 80th anniversary commemorations this year. On June 5, London Voices and Ben Parry provided an exquisite accompaniment to an outdoor sunset ceremony at the Bayeux War Cemetery, where my own relative’s name is recorded on the memorial wall; their a cappella rendition of The Road Home was to me one of the most powerful moments of live TV this year. Then on the anniversary day itself, there was a premiere for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new anthem, Lovingly Remembered; joining singer-songwriter Naomi Kimpenu and the Central Band of the RAF at the British Normandy Memorial were the 24 members of the London Youth Choirs’ London Youth Chamber Choir. These young singers are all aged 16 to 23, and so the event held particular resonance. As one told me: 'reading the ages of the soldiers who fought and died on that day – some as young as 16 – was something that will always stay with me.'

It had already been quite a musical trip for these young singers. On the outbound ferry, members stumbled across 98-year-old veteran Norrie Bartlett. He had joined the Royal Navy aged 16, and on D-Day was a gunner who helped bring back the injured. When he revealed to the young singers that he himself loved a song, the choir couldn’t resist treating him – and the entire boat – to an impromptu rendition of the folksong The Water is Wide. He had been their age on D-Day, and now they could say thank you through song.

This Remembrance Weekend we reflect on those who gave so much for our freedom – and what better expression of the gift of freedom can there be than music? Here are three composers who used music to channel their experiences, 80 years ago…

John Addison

Overture to A Bridge Too Far
BBC Concert Orchestra / Rumon Gamba (cond); ‘The Film Music of John Addison’, Chandos Movies, 2007

The composer who scored the movie A Bridge Too Far had himself served in the campaign it described. Having been a tank officer in Normandy and wounded at Caen, Addison went on to serve in Holland during Operation Market Garden. His lived experience fed his work on the movie three decades later and would win him a BAFTA.

His love of film music was born in wartime. Addison met film director Roy Boulting while in military training on Salisbury Plain, and their ensuing friendship led Addison to write his first film score after the war had ended; indeed, this wartime musical ‘awakening’ led him to ditch his piano studies in favour of composition, come peacetime. Until then though, his wartime love of music had to be satisfied by accompanying his drum-playing Lieutenant Colonel on the piano: Saturday night favourites at wartime HQ in Weymouth.

Lived experience didn’t just feed his score to A Bridge Too Far. With Battle of Britain hero Douglas Bader his brother-in-law, Addison was also an appropriate choice of composer for Reach For The Sky; the soaring central theme of its Main March – accompanied by shimmering cymbals and whirling strings – provides a neat illustration of taking flight.

Addison’s cheerful music – especially in A Bridge Too Far – is often wildly at odds to the scenes on screen. In a way it’s this counterpoint of joyous music with wartime horror that makes it so potent. Think of the bagpiper crossing the bridge amid a hail of gunfire: the image might seem ludicrous, but the story is true. With a hint of Brechtian alienation, it’s also a neat way to capture the fact high spirits can – indeed, must – exist in difficult times. In a way, the magic of Addison’s writing is to capture that stiff-upper-lip, quirky British can-do attitude that has come to be so associated with the wartime generation. No war is won with pessimism.

George Lloyd

Symphony No. 4 in B minor, ‘Arctic’
Albany Symphony Orchestra / George Lloyd (cond); ‘George Lloyd: The Symphonies – Nos 1-6’, Lyrita, 2024

Lloyd had written three symphonies and an opera by the time the War began, and come the other side of the conflict, composition would provide a vital antidote to the horrors he experienced. Serving as a Bandsman in the Royal Marines, he was then a radio engineer on the Arctic Convoys; in 1942, his ship was torpedoed and Lloyd was the last to escape alive from his compartment, nearly drowning in oil in the process. Lloyd suffered shellshock and had repeated nervous breakdowns. However, 1946 saw him create his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, with composition becoming a form of self-therapy.

The Fourth is nicknamed the ‘Arctic’; despite being written in 1946, it had to wait until 1981 for a first performance. Although sliding glissandos might illustrate the swirling waters and the fragmented staccato melodies create an underlying unease, there is little obvious trace of the trauma that proved an impetus to writing it; jaunty phrases and a solid tonal base suggest confidence, not fear. He never embraced 12-tone writing, saying 'it made composers forget how to sing'. The beauty of his work is that, despite what he witnessed, the song remained. Long seen to be a destined theatre composer until the War turned him onto symphonies, a clear lyrical streak remained and lends his music a striking warmth.

It took until this year for a major release of a full George Lloyd symphony cycle; March and April brought two welcome discs from Lyrita that chart his 12 symphonies, featuring three orchestras conducted by the composer.

Jim Radford

The Shores of Normandy
Jim Radford (voc)

The youngest-known serviceman present on D-Day, Radford was just 15 and a galley boy with the Merchant Navy on a 33-man rescue tugboat. On it, he helped build the monumental artificial Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches.

Radford didn’t return to Normandy for 25 years. But when he finally did, The Shores of Normandy was the result. He spent a whole year working on the song, and it took many more before he felt comfortable singing it in public. Come the 70th anniversary of D-Day, though, and he was performing it at the Royal Albert Hall. For the 75th anniversary, the song was released as a fundraiser for the Normandy Memorial Trust, bumping Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber off top spot in the Amazon Download charts. The proceeds helped enable the construction of a British Normandy Memorial, recording the names of the 22,442 people from more than 30 countries under British command who died in the Normandy campaign; this memorial was unveiled in 2021 and hosted the UK’s official 80th anniversary commemorations this summer. Radford, though, never managed to see the finished memorial; he passed away from COVID in November 2020 at the age of 92.

Like the best of folk ballads, his song transports us to a place and time, the language colloquial while the imagery rich and at times horrifying: it is testimony as much as it is song. In the charity single, the sensitive orchestration helps underline key phrases and images. A gentle wash of strings spotlights the important introductory scene-setting words, a sonic glow apt for the ‘dawning of the day’. A shuddering, shivering string tremolo launches us into the landings themselves, while later a martial trumpet line glides in. This is discrete scene painting, never obstructing the all-important words but helping bathe them in a poignant halo of sound. Look no further for an example of music as transport and a way of eternalising a moment.

All these composers underline the vital importance of music as a record: of things witnessed and of lives lived – and lost. Through music, we remember.