Framed by the enduring twin themes of love and war, this programme traces how composers have used the male chorus to evoke everything from communal ritual to intimate confession. The journey begins in the present with Jan Sandström’s onomatopoeic soundscape, inspired by a gibbon’s song in the Thai jungle—raw, rhythmic, and oddly lyrical—before turning to darker narrative in Britten’s ballad of betrayal and violence, written during the Second World War with the shadow of captivity close at hand. English folk-song arrangements offer a contrasting hush and homely directness, while Barber’s terse wartime meditation stretches a single moment of death into something almost timeless. Pizzetti and David draw on older vocal traditions—madrigalian expressivity, canonic craft, folk-derived motion—while Distler and Schumann reveal how clarity of line and contrapuntal discipline can sharpen the emotional focus. Schoenberg’s compact reflection on human connectedness opens the door to Weill’s Berliner Requiem: a secular act of mourning in which compassion flickers through stark urban imagery and bitter irony. Throughout, the male-voice sound is treated as both instrument and storyteller—capable of tenderness, granite strength, and unsettling modern edge.