The worth of a musical memorial

I finished the book Time’s Echo; Music, Memory, and the Second World War by Jeremy Eichler. It is a history book, what I’ve seen called a micro-history, focused on one or a small number of things. In this case it is the history of four classical music compositions that commemorate World War II and the Holocaust. I found the book fascinating and recommend it, though I realize classical music, especially heavy duty classical music, may have limited appeal. The four compositions are A Survivor from Warsaw by Arnold Schoenberg, Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss, War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, and Symphony 13, “Babi Yar” by Dmitri Shostakovich. Definitely heavy duty stuff. Along with a discussion of the pieces there is enough of a biography of the composers to explain why they came to write it. The story actually begins with the grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn in the 1740s. There began to be an understanding of common humanity between Germans and the Jews who live among them. There was a striving towards a German-Jewish culture. Of course, to build that culture many Jews felt they needed to convert to Christianity. That included the Mendelssohn family and Arnold Schoenberg. All that goodwill fell apart when the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I. Schoenberg saw who the Nazis were and shortly after Hitler took power he left for Paris, then moved on to New York. He settled in the Los Angeles area where a lot of other musical and intellectual Jewish refugees had settled. Prior to this Schoenberg wasn’t very religious. But Germany’s rejection of his Jewish ancestry restarted his Jewish faith. He felt he could inspire the Jews of Europe to rise up or flee. His efforts didn’t get very far. As a composer Schoenberg stretched tonal music (all popular and folk music is tonal and not very dissonant). Schoenberg pushed into atonal music and developed the tone-row method of composing (I could explain it, but for now I’ll stick to saying it is really dissonant, sounding harsh and disorienting, and most classical music lovers hate music written this way). But for *A Survivor from Warsaw*, with a narrator describing Nazi brutality, this method of composing actually works. When I taught how music works, I sometimes used it as an example. The piece had been commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky, who had commissioned a lot of music in the 1920s to 1940s. But when he got the score for A Survivor he did nothing with it. The premier was actually held in Albuquerque. Richard Strauss is not the Waltz King (that’s Johann Strauss). He wrote the theme that was used in 2001 A Space Odyssey, tone poems such as Don Juan, and several operas such as Der Rosenkavalier, the most famous living German composer at the start of the 1930s. As such he was invited by the Nazis to lead the music division of the culture ministry. He took a long time to see who the Nazis really were, though he could use his position to protect his daughter-in-law, who was Jewish, and his grandchildren. He could not save her siblings and parents. The Nazis eventually released him from his post. But because he had worked for, and did not denounce, the Nazis few wanted anything to do with him. He retreated to his home south of Munich where he wrote *Metamorphosen* as a way to express his grief of his country and the world. I hadn’t heard of the piece prior to reading this book. I have now listened to it on YouTube. I much prefer his Four Last Songs, written after Metamorphosen, and depicting the end of life. Britten and his life partner Peter Pears had applied for and gotten conscientious objector status during WWII. Just after the war Britten persuaded violinist Yehudi Menuhin that he should be the accompanist on a tour of Germany to play for those made homeless by the war. Britten was deeply shaken by the extent of the devastation. Early in the war Coventry Cathedral was bombed, leaving just the outer walls and bell tower. There was talk of rebuilding, but that changed to preserving the old cathedral as a memorial and building a glorious modern cathedral beside the old. When I went to England with a cousin in the 1980s we stopped to see the old and new cathedrals. The new one is bright, modern, and radiates joy. When the new one was consecrated in 1962 Britten, as the most famous composer of the land, was commissioned to write a piece. He wrote this War Requiem. The text is the Latin Mass for the dead, interspersed with poems of Wilfred Owen, who was also gay and died in WWI. Owen’s poems deal with the brutality of war and do not lead to catharsis. One of Owen’s poems is about the ancient story of Abraham and his son Isaac. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. At the last moment an angel tells him not to, and provides a ram to sacrifice instead. In Owen’s version Abraham kills his son anyway, then kills all the sons of Europe. I heard the work performed in concert. It’s quite an experience. It was also discussed in a composition class when I was working on my Master of Music. Shostakovich, throughout his life, was under the watchful eye of he Soviet regime. Some times he could do his own thing, sometimes the regime cracked down. Many times he wrote what the regime commissioned him to write, meaning he had to support their ideology, and not his own. Even so, his symphonies supported the regime in a coded way. They were celebratory in the required manner, but with an undertone that doesn’t fit. An example is his Fifth Symphony, written to bring himself back into good graces after his first denunciation. I think Shostakovich’s symphonies are the most interesting of the 20th century. He also wrote string quartets and because these were meant for small audiences he could let his true feelings out. Early in Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union the German army reached Kyiv. There they demanded all the Jews of the city assemble for relocation. The next morning 33 thousand Jews were escorted out of town to Babyn Yar, a valley nearby, where they were all murdered. The valley became their mass grave. The Soviets were pretty good covering it up because they didn’t want Jews to be singled out when a great number of Soviets also died. When Shostakovich saw a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko written about Babi Yar and antisemitism he knew that would become the first movement of his Thirteenth Symphony. The same poet provided more texts for four more movements. The Soviet regime did quite a bit to make sure the premier didn’t happen. The work wasn’t banned until later, but the regime could make life difficult. But after a lifetime of compromise Shostakovich was done. He had a text he firmly believed in and he provided music to fit. He did not back down. The premier happened. I’ve heard the work, or at least part of it, but it’s been a while. So I listened to it this evening while following along in the score. The whole piece is about an hour. It is for a bass solo, a choir of bases, and orchestra. The text is, of course, in Russian and the score does not provide translation. So I found a translation online. The first movement is about Babi Yar and a recounting of many of the antisemitic acts through history. The second movement says that emperors have not been able to command, buy, or kill humor. The third is about the endurance of Russian women as they do what’s needed for their families. The fourth is about fears, how they slither everywhere and subdue people; but a new fear is parroting someone else’s words. The last movement is about whether one is advancing their career by telling the truth or saying what the authorities want to hear. After the premier of War Requiem Britten sent a recording to Shostakovich. The two became good friends, though they rarely met. Each saw the other and someone who understood what they were trying to accomplish through music. Eichler also discussed the meaning and purpose of memorials. Can any type of memorial, including one of music, help future people to adequately understand the horror and devastation of World War II and the Holocaust? No. Memorials can also make us think we’ve encountered the past enough, we don’t need to delve deeper into the event. But music has (or can have) an endurance that exceeds the lives of survivors of horrific events, so can keep their stories alive. And music has an emotional immediacy that archives and websites can’t produce. Musical memorials are a whole lot better than no memorials at all, than letting the events fade into dry history books. Of course, Eichler discussed memorials in a lot more detail. As I said the book was fascinating to me, though I understand the limited appeal.