The work is scored for chorus, orchestra and features Michael Bellofatto on French horn. An internationally acclaimed composer, Kareem Roustom is a Professor of Music at Tufts University. The work sets to music texts from the Bible and three poems by Andreas Gryphius, Annie Fields and Sara Teasdale. All four texts—spanning millennia of human experience—offer a response to and a reflection on a war that defined each author's time. This new work poses fundamental questions: Why do we fight wars again and again? Do we not realize what is at stake?