Category: Choral Music / Cantata
Instrumentation: SATB chorus and piano; two movements a cappella
Duration: 15 minutes
Difficulty: Varies by movement
Text / Source: Poems by Thomas Hardy

Movements:
My Love’s Gone A-Fightin’
The Battle
The Man He Killed
Drummer Hodge
A Wife in London
Coda

The Battle Cry / A Tragedy is a 15-minute cantata consisting of six short songs for chorus and piano, with two a cappella movements. Setting poems by Thomas Hardy, the work reflects on the human cost of war through scenes of departure, battle, death, grief, moral questioning, and remembrance.

Although Hardy’s poems were written in response to the Boer War and World War I, their sentiments reach beyond a single historical moment. Baxter’s setting gives the cycle a dramatic and emotional arc, moving from folk-like innocence to martial intensity, private sorrow, and a final a cappella question about the abandonment of peace.

The Battle Cry / A Tragedy is well suited for choral programs centered on war, remembrance, peace, literature, and moral reflection. Its varied scoring offers contrast across the cycle, including SATB chorus with piano, a cappella choral writing, solo voice with piano, and smaller vocal textures.