From Death to Life was written four years before Parry's death and it represents his fully mature style of composition. The Brighton Festival commissioned the work for its 1914 season and this symphonic poem portrays Parry's very personal reaction to the outbreak of the First World War. The meaning of the work was aptly described by F. Gilbert Webb, who wrote the program notes for the Festival that year saying, "Death, arm-in-arm with Fate, walks ever in our midst, while life unceasingly protests, deplores, defies, despairs, and finally triumphs spiritually. Such briefly stated, is the psychological basis of Sir Hubert Parry's latest work, inspired by the tremendous events through which we are passing." From Death to Life is two connected movements, the first initially subtitled "Lament", and the second "Consolation". These subtitles were used for the first performance which Parry conducted on November 12, 1914 in Brighton. At a second performance in London at the Queen's Hall on March 18th, 1915 the whole work was given the subtitle Mors et Vitae with the two movements appearing as Via Mortis and Via Vitae, titles which further stressed Parry's ethical view of the meaning of life together with man's moral obligations within it.

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