Music to remember
Today, on the day dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, we pay tribute with music. There is a music that helps us to remember these atrocities, a music that becomes a tool of memory and mourning in the face of tragedy.
On the one hand, it has been handed down to us from the concentration camps, Theresienstadt in particular, which was renowned for its relatively rich cultural and musical life. But it was also a staging post for the deportation of prisoners to the extermination camps. This was the case for several composers and musicians, such as Pavel Haas, Hans Kràsa and Viktor Ullmann, who were transported on the same train on October 16, 1944 and died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz two days later.
This music – composed and played by the persecuted – tells of pain, anger and the brutality of daily life, but also of hope. It expresses the struggle to survive. It is an act of resistance. Viktor Ullmann wrote that Theresienstadt “helped to enhance rather than hinder my musical activities, that in no way did we sit down to weep on the shores of the waters of Babylon, and that our effort to respectfully serve the Arts was proportional to our will to live, in spite of everything”. And it’s a miracle that some of this repertoire has survived, especially that transmitted mainly orally. Rags, bandages… any material that could be used to write their music has been hidden in unusual places, escaping the guards’ controls and reaching us. The Italian Jewish musicologist, pianist and conductor Francesco Lotoro has attempted to collect this music and has published his Encyclopedia of Music Written in the Camps during WW2, with scores of works written in the Lagers between 1933 and 1945.
On the other hand, music for remembering was composed by exiled composers. Hanns Eisler and his “Deutsche Sinfonie” op. 50, Kurt Weill and the music to “It’s Fun to Be Free” and “We will Never Die”, Arturo Toscanini and his adaptation of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Hymn of the Nations”, broadcast on the radio on January 31, 1944 and sung by Jewish-American tenor Jan Peerce. Several refugee musicians also expressed their strong opposition to the regime: Arthur Rubinstein, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Vittorio Rieti.
Touched by this cruelty, a number of composers dedicated their art to the memory of the millions of victims: Arnold Schönberg composed “Ein Überlebender aus Warschau”, Luigi Dallapiccola the opera “Il prigionero”, Steve Reich “Different Trains”, Dmitri Shostakovich the “Symphony no. 13 in B flat minor (Op. 113, subtitled “Babi Yar”), Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Dies irae”, Luigi Nono’s concerto “Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz”. Thanks to a number of successful singer-songwriters, subsequent generations have also appropriated the memory of the Holocaust: Bob Dylan and his “With God on our side”, Leonard Cohen with “Story of Isaac”, “Nuit et brouillard” by Jean Ferrat, “Dachau Blues” by Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart, Francesco Guccini with “Auschwitz”, Barbara and “Mon enfance”, “Comme toi” by Jean-Jacques Goldman.
In memory of the victims.
