Musical Witness and Holocaust Representation . By Amy Lynn Wlodarski.
2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 97; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ml/gcw032
ISSN1477-4631
Autores Tópico(s)Musicology and Musical Analysis
ResumoAmy Lynn Wlodarski’s slim volume is a welcome addition to the relatively small number of books devoted exclusively to music related to the Holocaust. The book comprises an introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue. The chapters discuss Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw (1948) and Theodor Adorno’s writings concerning it; Hanns Eisler’s score for the film Nuit et Brouillard (1956); Judische Chronik (1961), composed jointly by Boris Blacher, Paul Dessau, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Hans Werner Henze, and Rudolf Wagner-Régeny; and Steve Reich’s Different Trains (1988). While the epilogue presents itself initially as a summation it is, in fact, primarily concerned with discussion of the relatively new opera Pnima … ins Innere (2000) by Chaya Czernowin, an Israeli composer and Harvard professor who has become highly regarded by intellectuals in the north-eastern United States. Essentially, Musical Witness and Holocaust Representation is Wlodarski’s attempt to establish criteria—or, at least, to present options—for judging Holocaust-related music by exploring ‘aesthetics … interpretive contexts of history … and ethical and political intents’ inherent in Adorno’s famous comment that ‘to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’ (p. 5). To this end she enlists the aid of a large number of distinguished scholars and philosophers (including Adorno), and utilizes comments or writings of the composers as well. Her own musical analyses are articulate and often penetrating.
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