KEEP CALM AND COMPOSE

British composers played a vital role in lifting spirits in World War II, sometimes in unlikely ways.

- Rob Ainsley

Audiences at the 1943 Proms season experienced performances of two great, very different, war symphonies. On Thursday 24 June, the world premiere of Vaughan Williams's Fifth; then on Monday 19 July, Shostakovich's Seventh, first heard in Britain at the previous year's Proms.

Shostakovich was in a besieged Leningrad, frozen and starving. Dark and epic, the Seventh's narrative martial solemnity set the pattern for 'war music'. VW, however, wrote his in the comparative warmth and comfort of Dorking. His magic Fifth floats serenely, like morning haze over the Cotswolds. Any struggle - in its Romanza, inspired by Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is personal, internal.

Bombs were, nevertheless, pounding Britain. The 1940 Proms had been cut short by the Luftwaffe's destruction of its base, the Queen's Hall - the only available London venue for the 1941 season was the Royal Albert Hall, its home ever since. A symphony can't grow potatoes or rebuild houses. But music can charge a national spirit, lift morale and perhaps help spades dig for victory or trowels spread cement a bit more resolutely. So what did Britain's composers do to help the war effort? It's a tale of film scores, jail terms, jam-making and bad driving.

Home-grown works were promoted, but Britain had no rigid diktats or propaganda