Peace In Our Time, Reginald / Baroque Mobley, CD

War is one of the oldest things we know. For too many reasons, few good, we of the human race are drawn into conflict with and against each other to resolve, or to gain. Especially when we lose the ability to accept that words, compassion, patience, and compromise can achieve similar goals without the sword and gun's skill for drawing blood and ending life. One of the counters that we possess to balance such ugliness is art. Music, especially, has had the ability to help those affected by war to sort, change, galvanize, and even distract from all of the feelings and emotions that emerge from the presence of war. It is in these dark times that we truly see the immense power that music has in it's ability to motivate, comfort, and heal. Recently, we began a period of remembrance for the 100 year anniversary of the First World War. Between the years of 1914-1918, we saw the first true global war that involved nearly every continent on Earth. With this remembrance, we also revisit the art that arose in response to this war, as well as all that came in it's wake and memory. As 2018 closes the 100 year anniversary of WWI, it begins the anniversary of a much older, yet no less important conflict involving Western civilization. The year 2018 is the 400th anniversary of the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. This war still stands as one of the longest and most destructive in European history. A bloody conflict that surrounded the unrest between Protestant and Catholic regions in the Holy Roman Empire, a death toll of roughly 8 million people, and a nearly 40% decrease in the overall population in German states, is still too high a cost against our modern day population. Even in the shadow of the two Great Wars of the 20th century. Yet, just as with WWI, in the shadow of the violence of the Thirty Years' War, beauty persists. Music and art shines ever brighter as a balm for the afeard, and does it's due diligence in helping the people of that time to sort through their grief.