Echoes of Time: World War II, the Holocaust, and the Music of Memory
19.99 €
15.99 €
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Echoes of Time: World War II, the Holocaust, and the Music of Memory
19.99 €
15.99 €
In 1785, the great German poet Friedrich Schiller wrote "Ode to Joy," embodying the deepest dreams of the European Enlightenment. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony gave Schiller's words wings, but a century later, the same "Ode to Joy" was co-opted by Nazi propagandists and distorted beyond belief. When it comes to how society remembers these increasingly distant catastrophes, history books, archives, documentaries, and memorials carved in stone come to mind. Jeremy Eichler invites us to listen to the musical memorials of World War II. The author passionately and candidly demonstrates the power of music as a cultural memory, an art form capable of conveying the meaning of the past.
The author shows how four outstanding composers—Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten—lived through the era of World War II and the Holocaust, and then translated their experiences into deeply moving, transcendental musical works that echo a lost time. Eichler is tireless and inventive, drawing on the testimonies of writers, poets, philosophers, musicians, and ordinary people. He shows how an entire era was encoded in these sounds and the composers' lives. Eichler visited key sites associated with music creation—from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral to the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv. As the living memory of World War II fades, Echoes of Time offers new ways to listen to and hear history. To recognize in this music echoes of what another era heard, wrote, dreamed, hoped for, and mourned. This book, full of lyricism and compassion for its heroes, makes us think about the legacy of war, about the presence of the past in our lives today.
The author shows how four outstanding composers—Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten—lived through the era of World War II and the Holocaust, and then translated their experiences into deeply moving, transcendental musical works that echo a lost time. Eichler is tireless and inventive, drawing on the testimonies of writers, poets, philosophers, musicians, and ordinary people. He shows how an entire era was encoded in these sounds and the composers' lives. Eichler visited key sites associated with music creation—from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral to the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv. As the living memory of World War II fades, Echoes of Time offers new ways to listen to and hear history. To recognize in this music echoes of what another era heard, wrote, dreamed, hoped for, and mourned. This book, full of lyricism and compassion for its heroes, makes us think about the legacy of war, about the presence of the past in our lives today.
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