20th-Century Elegy
The cataclysmic events—ethnic genocide, wars, assassinations, and intolerance—that darkened the 20th century defy explanation. Historians can point to causes and explore the philosophies that fueled these horrors, but that’s only an intellectual exercise.
While music similarly cannot explain these events, it can provide insight and sometimes lead to solace. Learn about a handful of composers who—when confronted by the horrendous events of their times—rose above the pain, memorialized these moments, and forewarned the future.
The Holocaust and World War II
In the bitter time when fascists ascended to power in Europe and Asia, there were artists who saw the coming conflagration and poured their anger, grief, and fear into their music. Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–1963) was a dedicated German anti-Fascist. After Hitler took power in 1933, Hartmann refused homeland performances of his works. Luckily, he did not stop composing. Despite being branded a degenerate composer by the Nazis, his works of that time spoke to the madness of his world. His Concerto funebre, written in 1939, protests the Nazi occupation of Prague and boldly quotes Czech music, while his Piano Sonata “27 April 1945” depicts the lumbering steps of prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp.
Michael Tippett (1905–1998) and Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) were both conscientious objectors during World War II and composed works that spoke eloquently about the hatred that fueled the violence engulfing the world. Tippett’s A Child of Our Time was written in response to Kristallnacht (“night of broken glass”), the 1938 Nazi rampage that attacked German Jews, burned their synagogues, and destroyed shops. Tippett’s powerfully dramatic work was influenced by the sacred oratorios of Bach. Some of the work’s genius is in his use of African American spirituals in place of the Lutheran chorales that Bach referenced. Tippett speaks to the evils of oppression and makes a poignant plea for universal compassion.
Britten’s War Requiem was composed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral after the first was destroyed in a 1940 bomb attack. Like Tippett, Britten looked back to older music, in this case the traditional Latin mass for the dead. Britten’s masterstroke is interpolating passages from the posthumous works of British poet Wilfred Owen, who captured the harrowing misery and pain of World War I. (Ironically, he was killed one week before the end of that conflict.) The juxtaposition of the Latin mass’s healing words with Owen’s poetry is devastating. The War Requiem serves as both a memorial to what was lost and a warning against horrors yet to come.
The atomic bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 ended World War II but opened the door to new nightmares. After visiting the ruins of Hiroshima, Polish composer Kryzystof Penderecki (1933–2020) renamed an earlier concerto Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. Penderecki’s work—scored for 52 string instruments—is harrowing, with the strings slashing and screaming in swirling waves of dissonance. There is no comfort in this work.
The Assassinations of Kennedy, King, and Kennedy
The shocking assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968 shook the nation to its core. All that was left was mourning. British composer Herbert Howells (1892–1983) wrote his beautiful a cappella motet “Take him, earth, for cherishing” for an American-Canadian memorial service for JFK. Howells’s sensitive setting of the text, an English translation of a fourth-century Latin burial poem, uses chant and surprising harmonies to paint a tender portrait of grief and eventual consolation.
Roger Sessions (1896–1985) turned to Walt Whitman’s Lincoln elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” for his large-scale tribute to Dr. King and Robert Kennedy. Sessions’s masterpiece is scored for soprano, contralto, baritone, chorus, and orchestra. He sets Whitman’s text brilliantly, underscoring words with subtle instrumental touches, while shaping an emotionally gripping dramatic arc.
