Last night, rather reluctantly (of which I am now ashamed), I started to watch a 90-minute TV programme about life at Auschwitz, the wartime murder camp for Jews. More specifically, the unexpected role music played at this hellhole. Quite quickly I was gripped.
Inevitably the music tended to be by German composers and the lyrics of the songs were rendered in German. The parallels between this and the singing instruction I've been receiving over eight years were inescapable. To the point where I find I'm just as familiar - and moved - by singing in German as in English.
Yes; moved. These lines are are from the eleventh song (Fruhlingstraum - Spring dream) in Schubert's song-cycle Winterreise (Winter journey)
von einer schönen Maid
von Herzen und von Küssen
von Wonne und Seligkeit
Of embracing and kissing
Of joy and rapture)*
Reminding me of recent visits to German Christmas markets, of the warmth I'd experienced and the puzzled affection shown when I asked about German reaction to Britain's decision to go Brexit. Of the decision, taken post-war between Germany and France that laying the foundations of the EU might well act as a bulwark against future warfare in Europe. Of the present-day disturbing signs of the re-emergence of an extreme right.
One encouraging if possibly minor change in labelling: in the programme I watched and elsewhere in news bulletins, the BBC is careful to make appropriate distinctions between German and Nazi
*Translation copyright Bärenreiter, Kassel
What was the name of the TV show?
ReplyDeleteColette: BBC 1, January 27 2025. The Last Musician of Auschwitz
DeleteI can't watch anything even vaguely harrowing these days, regardless of how well presented, how lovely the music is etc. It's too frightening the way the world is going and I can only cope with very lightweight TV.
ReplyDeleteTrying to make sense of it is not easy. People are so polarised these days. the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and are easily swayed into believing that the other poor people are a threat and the reason for the decline in everything. All fuelled by hate on social media. Hideous.
Jean: Even more ironic is that there are no surprises; many of the horrific things that are happening in the USA now were announced by Trump as he campaigned. Thus we must assume that the result of the democratically organised election means that this present state of affairs is what the majority of voters wanted.
ReplyDeleteMany voters here are so intransigently single issue that any global grasp of matters is lost. The “you can pry my gun out of my cold dead hands” crew - the “pro-life” mob, the homophobes. Hopelessly entrenched and oblivious to the complexity of the world.
DeleteAs for the multi- issue voters there is a propensity among liberals to try to defend certain rights - abortion rights for example - through “ ballot initiatives”. Here in New York there was a ballot initiative to guarantee the right to equal treatment under the law, which opponents construed (probably correctly) as a right to obtain an abortion. Great liberal relief and celebration when it passed, but this ala carte balloting has a downside. Many wealthy libs could vote YES re choice and feel somehow freed to vote for Trump to cut their taxes. A great example of simple minded thinking by the libs. Or maybe some brilliant work by libs “in name only” aka oligarchically inclined. Maybe I should found “Overthinkers Anonymous”. Very hard to cope with the insanity here.
That’s me above
DeleteMikeM: You've started a completely different hare, I need time to respond. Check in again in a week.
DeleteMikeM: My apologies for letting this lie for much longer than a week. My domestic life has become more restricted recently and it is increasingly difficult to find periods of consecutive time that allow me to think - usefully - and then convert thoughts into prose. Even the sudden burst that allowed me to progress the novel has stuttered and ground to a halt.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about single-issue voters needing to grasp the change in priorities now facing the US's opposition. Obviously the problem is enormous but, even so, its enormity is not fully comprehended. The character of the nation - in the sense that it enjoys such a vague entity - is fast disappearing, although this may be more evident to those on the outside looking in. Foreigners are now starting to accept that the US nation's heart is no longer "in the right place". International generosity, sympathy, altruism and interest are all gone. And this will become more starkly evident in about a year's time when the events of of 2028 are discussed.
It is quite possible that the 2024 presidential election will have been the country's last "fair" visit to the polls. What ensues could well be a banana-republic farrago in which the existing administration is returned with a 90% majority. Those waiting for Trump's delayed punishment as a citizen (always assuming he lasts that long) will wait in vain. And even if he succumbs entirely to dementia - the symptoms are, of course, already there - he will, I assume, be succeeded by Vance who offers a rather more plausible version of what a head of state should look like but with the additional skill of improved articulacy when it comes to preaching the extremes of Trumpism.
And I'm aware I haven't referred to the huge elephant in the room. Putin, of course. It was always assumed that Trump favoured Baldie Of The Steppes because he envied his role of dictator. But I think there's more to it than that. Those visits Trump made to Russia should be re-examined in the light of legal encounters which revealed that Trump seemed not to be blessed with a free flow of spondulicks. Might Vladimir carry one or two highly embarrassing IOUs, safely mewed up in a Zurich bank safety box? As a conspiracy theory it seems better than most.
The sleepy innocence of Dormont, the Pittsburgh suburb, (plus its potential etymological associations) seem as distant as the Ice Age. And yet the dates are 1966 - 69, a mere step away in my long, long life. There the immediate priority was the acquisition of a baseball mitt, unworn throughout the oughties.