Several musical compositions have allowed us to access realities about which we only had historical knowledge but that we did not understand or assume in its real magnitude. For example, the 13th Symphony by Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), known as “Chapter Yar”, which incorporated several texts by Russian writer Yevgeny Yevtushenko, is capable of transporting us to the extermination camps that German National Socialism built in Ukraine to massacre local Jews during World War II, with the support of certain local collaborators. In between the movements, some poignant lines from Yevtushenko’s poem, “I was at Babi Yar”, are set to music by the great Shostakovich: “We can only hug each other / in this dark room. / I want to kiss you one more time, come closer. / They are coming.” Who’s coming? Well, the captors of the unhappy couple who know that it will be their last goodbye.
Another work that transports us to contexts of overwhelming depth is the Third Symphony by Henryk Górecki (1933-2010), known as “The Lamentations”. The Polish musician was inspired, among other motivations, after a visit he made to the Gestapo prisons in his country. As he walked through the cells, Górecki read on a wall a text that an eighteen-year-old prisoner, Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, left for eternity: “Mom, don’t cry, no. /Immaculate Queen of Heaven, /support me always. / Hail Mary, you are full of grace”. It is evident that the young woman passed away. But just by reading the text and listening to this work we feel the salvific cry that a human being is capable of raising in his darkest hours.
The important composer Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020), after a photographic exhibition on Hiroshima, which included testimonial recordings of the survivors of the nuclear massacre, began to work on what was his most recognized work: “Treno to the victims of Hiroshima ” (1961). Said work, for 52 bowed string instruments, refers us to the sensation of the infinite shrieks that the inhabitants of the city devastated by the atomic madness must have uttered. Penderecki once said about this composition: “I left in the train expressed my firm belief that the sacrifice of Hiroshima will never be forgotten and abandoned”. And believe us. After listening to this composition you can somehow feel and relive the complete destruction that the inhabitants of Hiroshima must have suffered.
As we continue to listen to Krouse’s “Armenian Requiem”, it is hard for us to visually imagine the real terror of the victims of this genocide, as could occur in any other situation where evil condemns us to degree zero of the human condition. However, in this work and others, we manage to recognize the magnitude of the human drama beyond contexts and other considerations. We cross limits and embrace the common pain of our fellow human beings. Art and especially music have served as a mystical bridge, in the deep dimension of the mystery, that of love for one’s neighbor.
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