When asked about why he composed and the creative forces behind it, American composer Aaron Copland stated: 

          

"[Today’s artists] are the only ones who can express the spirit of what it means to be alive       today. That’s what makes the creation of art seem important. You’re not just expressing your own individuality. You, as a person, are an exemplar; you are one of the people living now who can put this thing down. In another twenty years … the world experience will be different, so the need becomes very pressing. You have a sense of urgency, of being occupied with something essential and unique. To leave our mark of the present on the future — what could be more natural?"(1)

 

With hindsight, this statement becomes particularly relevant to composers of the 1930s and 1940s in war-torn Europe. Composers felt the need to put their thoughts and emotions into their music, regardless of the situation they found themselves in, whether in hiding from the Germans, in a ghetto, or in a concentration camp. While several of the pieces on this program were written before the war started, some were written during the war, and for those fortunate to survive, some were composed after the war. In these works we can see how life changed during the war years for these composers.

 

Yet how could these composers continue to write while facing the Nazis? Again, Copland gives us a general idea by using the emotion “depression”:

 

"Too much depression will not result in a work of art because a work of art is an affirmative gesture. To compose, you have to feel that you are accomplishing something. If you feel you are accomplishing something, you won’t feel so depressed. You may feel depressed, but it can’t be so depressing that you can’t move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression." (2)

 

Whatever feelings or emotions these composers felt, they put it into their music – and accomplished something. Whether for themselves or for others, these composers practiced what has become known as “Spiritual Resistance.”

 

Spiritual Resistance is defined by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as:

 

"Spiritual resistance refers to attempts by individuals to maintain their humanity, personal integrity, dignity, and sense of civilization in the face of Nazi attempts to dehumanize and degrade them. Most generally, spiritual resistance may refer to the refusal to have one's spirit broken in the midst of the most horrible degradation. Cultural and educational activities, maintenance of community documentation, and clandestine religious observances are three examples of spiritual resistance." (3)

 

By continuing to compose, these men and women refused to lose themselves to the Nazis. Composing helped them maintain their sense of self, their identity, and as much normalcy as possible in their lives.

 

Copland also gives insight into how composers hope their music will tell the story of the time, what it meant, and how it felt.

 

"The arts in general, I think, help to give significance to life. That’s one of their very basic and important functions. The arts soften man’s mortality and make more acceptable the whole life experience. It isn’t that you think your music will last forever, because nobody knows what’s going to last forever. But, you do know, in the history of the arts, that there have been certain works which have symbolized whole periods and the deepest feelings of mankind, and it’s that aspect of artistic creation which draws one on always, and makes it seem so very significant. I don’t think about this when I write my music, of course, but I think about it after the act, and believe it to be the moving force behind the need to be creative in the arts." (4)

 

For these composers, knowing that their lives were in danger and their mortality in question, the need to compose was imperative.  The hope of creating something lasting drove their existence to the end of their lives. But for those that died early, with no one to promote them, the need to promote their music for them becomes imperative for artists today. We owe our fellow musicians that.

 

James Conlon, Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera and director of the Ravinia Festival states:

 

"The cliché that “there are no lost masterpieces” reveals our own ignorance. Entire civilizations, along with their masterpieces, have been destroyed by war since the beginning of human history. Various forms of censorship have repeatedly affected artists and works, and continue to do so. The suppression of these composers and musicians caused the greatest single rupture in what had been a continuous seamless transmittal of German classical music . . . The policies of the Third Reich destroyed the environment in which this exchange could flourish, murdering and scattering an entire generation of its greatest talents, with its creative polemics and dialectics, forcing those who survived to settle all over the world, where there were no comparable artistic milieus in which to live and create. This immense self-destructive act seriously damaged one of Germany's most cherished traditions, killed its caretakers, and buried a “lost generation” along with its spirit. There are three aspects to be taken into consideration when approaching this music: moral, historical and artistic. Undoing injustice, when one can, is a moral mandate for all citizens of a civilized world. We cannot restore to these composers their lost lives. We can, however, return the gift that would mean more to them than any other--to play their music. By keeping alive their music and that of other victims of totalitarianism, we deny those past regimes a posthumous victory. The revival of this music can serve as a reminder for us to resist any contemporary or future impulse to define artistic standards on the basis of racist, political, sectarian or exclusionary ideologies. . . . It is we, now, who can begin to “absolve the foulness of their fate.”(5)

 

As Conlon states, performing their music is all we can do for these composers, but it is what they would want us to do. If we do not, then we allow the Nazis one more victory: that of permanently silencing a generation of composers and musicians. This must not happen.

 

 

 

(1) Maria Popova. "Legendary Composer Aaron Coplad on the Conditions of Creativit: Emotion vs Intellect and the Trap of Public Opinion." https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/09/aaron-copland-creative-experience/

 

 

(2) Ibid.

 

(3) “Spiritual Resistance in the Ghettos.”  United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2015

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005416

Accessed October 4, 2015.

 

(4) Popova. “Legendary Composer Aaron Copland on the Conditions of Creativity, Emotion vs. Intellect, and the Trap of Public Opinion.”

 

(5) James Conlon. “Recovering a Musical Heritage: The Music Suppressed by the Third Reich.” OREL Foundation, 2015.  http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/journal/journalArticle/recovering_a_musical_heritage_the_music_suppressed_by_the_third_reich/