Written as a requiem and using forces similar in scale to Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony, the work calls for a full symphony orchestra, soloists, massed choirs including children's choirs, offstage instrumentalists and an organ.
Foulds wrote the work between 1919 and 1921, and conceived it as a memorial to the dead of all nations in the wake of the First World War.
The text (in English), assembled by his wife Maud MacCarthy, to whom the score is dedicated, is not liturgical, though it uses sections of the Requiem Mass plus several other Biblical passages as well as excerpts from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, a poem by the Hindu poet Kabir and a few passages she wrote herself.
The programme-book for that occasion proclaimed on its cover that the work was 'A Cenotaph in Sound'[1] and it is likely that Foulds wished to present his work as a musical equivalent of the Cenotaph recently erected in Whitehall and designed by his friend Sir Edwin Lutyens.
The performance brought Foulds such popular acclaim that after his death Maud MacCarthy was able to publish a book devoted to the positive responses to the work, though critical reaction was mixed.