A survivor of Warsaw is one of the pages of music that best describes the ferocity, the horror, the senselessness of the Holocaust. Arnold Schoenberg composed the music and lyrics of this song for solo voice and orchestra in 1947. Send
condensing two incidents relating to the tragic story of the Warsaw ghetto, that is, its "liquidation" (1942) and the revolt (1943). The narrative is not intended to be historically true, due to the fact that the gas chambers were not near the ghetto. In this respect also warned Schoenberg il pubblico: "Non dovremmo dimenticare mai questo, anche se eventi del genere non hanno avuto luogo nella maniera in cui li descrivo nel Sopravvissuto . Non importa. Il fatto essenziale è che io li ho visti nella mia immaginazione".
Il realismo della composizione è dunque prima di tutto psicologico. La musica dà corpo e anima alle emozioni come se imprimesse segni sulla carne viva: l'impotenza di trovarsi in balìa dei propri carnefici, lo struggimento della separazione dai propri cari, la violenza fisica, la disperazione, il riscatto.
I mezzi musicali con cui tutto questo avviene sono crudi, semplici, diretti: una fanfara di tromba annuncia il brusco 'risveglio' e l'arrivo del Feldwebel And when the Jews are separated from each other, the violins they indulge in feeble cry, and the excitement in the battered body count is indicated by a convulsive accelerating. Music - Daughter of expressionism stabbing Erwartung - assist in the memories of the narrator through dramatic changes of timbre, dynamics and instrumental texture. Music and lyrics are perfectly synchronized, as if the narrator was living again in real time his dramatic experience. The culmination of this tormented
stream of consciousness is the pitch of the Shema Yisroel , sung by a male choir that replaces Sprechstimme the narrator: the suffering, death, barbarism give way to despair as great a claim of identity. Here you can read the English text with its translation work, to approach listening to the searing interpretation of Pierre Boulez (narrator, Gunther Reich)
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