the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the music of remembrance
"[Music] critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler makes a passionate case for the power of music as culture's memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past. Eichler shows how four towering composers--Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten--lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving, transcendent works of music, scores that echo lost time. Summoning the supporting testimony of writers, poets, philosophers, musicians, and everyday citizens, Eichler reveals how the essence of an entire epoch has been inscribed in these sounds and stories. Along the way, he visits key locations central to the music's creation, from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral to the site of the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv. As the living memory of the Second World War fades, [this book] proposes new ways of listening to history and learning to hear between its notes the resonances of what another era has written, heard, dreamed, hoped, and mourned"--Provided by publisher.
