TIME'S ECHO

A respected cultural historian delves into music that serves as “a carrier of memory for a post-Holocaust world.”

Not all memorials are made of chiseled stone. Some of the most enduring are evocative pieces of music, often integrating spoken narratives. Eichler, chief classical music critic at the Boston Globe, focuses on four major composers of the period following World War II: Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten. Refreshingly, the author makes no attempt to hide their flaws. Strauss made compromises with the Nazi regime, although in the end he admitted the depth of his failings—as demonstrated in his masterful Metamorphosen, which also commemorated the victims of the war. In many of his works, Shostakovich complied with the Stalinist precept that art must serve the state, but in his later symphonies, he radically changed course, condemning Hitler's and Stalin's atrocities with equal force. Schoenberg struggled to find a balance between his German cultural roots and his Jewish heritage, a duality reflected in his calibrated dissonance and innovative scaling. A Survivor From Warsaw is a powerful example of music as memorial. Britten, a committed pacifist, was conflicted by the idea of commemorative music, concerned that it would seem triumphalist. However, in War Requiem, he captured the complexity of war and the importance of humane responses to it. Eichler's examination of these artists and their works is authoritative, but the book is not an easy read. The text is dense, and some of the author’s detours, such as his lengthy discourse on Mendelsohn, do not seem to fit his theme. He also assumes that readers will have a detailed grasp of classical music. Consequently, this book is not for everyone, but those who choose to accept the challenge will find it fascinating and, in its own way, inspiring.

A noteworthy piece of scholarship giving context and depth to key composers and their work.