{"id":8061,"date":"2011-09-15T16:00:24","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T21:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=8061"},"modified":"2011-09-15T11:20:20","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T16:20:20","slug":"apsu-concert-to-examine-musical-influence-of-the-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2011\/09\/15\/apsu-concert-to-examine-musical-influence-of-the-holocaust\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU Concert to Examine Musical Influence of the Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheClarksville, TN<\/strong> – In the early 1940s, during World War II, many of Europe\u2019s most prominent Jewish musicians boarded trains destined for the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.<\/p>\n

German propaganda described the city\u2019s small fortress as a camp with a \u201crich cultural life,\u201d but when the new inmates arrived, hope quickly faded. Their beloved instruments were replaced by workers\u2019 tools, and they toiled endlessly each day as slave laborers for Hitler\u2019s Third Reich.<\/p>\n

But for a few minutes one morning in 1943, all that changed. Hundreds of Jewish prisoners gathered that day inside the camp and started singing Giuseppe Verdi\u2019s \u201cRequiem\u201d \u2013 a powerful, somber piece of music. They\u2019d rehearsed for weeks before hand, memorizing the complex work without the help of books or sheet music.<\/p>\n

It was a simple, yet powerful, act of defiance, but not one that uncommon in the camps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prisoners were always making music,\u201d Korre Foster, assistant professor of music at Austin Peay State University, said. \u201cThey were singing, they were playing violin. That highlights the importance of music as a creative and vital aspect of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

This fall, the APSU Department of Music is examining the powerful role music played during those dark times with a new choral concert, \u201cMusic for the Holocaust.\u201d The performance, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7:30pm on Friday, October 21st, in the APSU Music\/Mass Communication Building\u2019s Concert Hall.<\/p>\n

The music created during that period wasn\u2019t always inspiring or defiant. In Claude Lanzmann\u2019s epic documentary, \u201cShoah,\u201d the survivor Simon Srebrink recalls how, at the age of 13, he was forced to sing Polish folk tunes and military songs for his captors. Those captors later shot him in the head, but Srebrink survived. The somberness of his experience is echoed in the loud, almost violent percussive sounds, which open the October 21st concert.<\/p>\n

The performance begins with the world premier of \u201cIn the dark times will there also be singing,\u201d a new composition by APSU professor of music Jeffrey Wood. The haunting work alternates between readings from the late Charles Reznikoff\u2019s poetry on the Holocaust, to choral performances sung in Hebrew.<\/p>\n

The second half of the concert will feature a performance of Donald McCullough\u2019s \u201cHolocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps.\u201d McCullough, a celebrated composer across America and Europe, traveled to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and located several melodies crafted by prisoners in Buchenwald. He took those pieces and composed the 40-minute work that seeks to give \u201ca human voice to the victims of the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is basically how these individuals still made music, even though they were suffering,\u201d Foster said.<\/p>\n

That work will alternate between APSU voice faculty members singing solos and APSU theater faculty members reading letters composed during the Holocaust. Members of different student choirs will also be on stage as a choral union, performing the songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to know that this is beyond a musical concert,\u201d Foster said. \u201cIt\u2019s much more of a life experience, especially for our students. It\u2019s a learning experience for our students because we are reminding them of things that happened during World War II and the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on the \u201cMusic for the Holocaust\u201d concert, contact the APSU Department of Music at 931.221,7818.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – In the early 1940s, during World War II, many of Europe\u2019s most prominent Jewish musicians boarded trains destined for the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. German propaganda described the city\u2019s small fortress as a camp with a \u201crich cultural life,\u201d but when the new inmates arrived, hope quickly faded. Their beloved instruments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[10584,23,1129,4025,262,825,10585,10586,10587,9793,10588,7386,5451,5592,10589,10590,10591,10592,10593,10594,2279,1239],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-261","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8062,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061\/revisions\/8062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}