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Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance
A stirring account of how music bears witness to history and carries forward the memory of the wartime past
In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,” he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as equals. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony then gave wing to Schiller’s words, but barely a century later these same words were claimed by Nazi propagandists and twisted by a barbarism so complete that it ruptured, as one philosopher put it, “the deep layer of solidarity among all who wear a human face.”
When it comes to how societies remember these increasingly distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of history books, archives, documentaries, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time’s Echo, the award-winning critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler makes a passionate and revelatory case for the power of music as culture’s memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past.
With a critic’s ear, a scholar’s erudition, and a novelist’s eye for detail, Eichler shows how four towering composers—Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten—lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving, transcendent works of music, scores that echo lost time. Summoning the supporting testimony of writers, poets, philosophers, musicians, and everyday citizens, Eichler reveals how the essence of an entire epoch has been inscribed in these sounds and stories. Along the way, he visits key locations central to the music’s creation, from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral to the site of the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv.
As the living memory of the Second World War fades, Time’s Echo proposes new ways of listening to history, and learning to hear between its notes the resonances of what another era has written, heard, dreamed, hoped, and mourned. A lyrical narrative full of insight and compassion, this book deepens how we think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the renewed promise of art for our lives today.
In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,” he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as equals. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony then gave wing to Schiller’s words, but barely a century later these same words were claimed by Nazi propagandists and twisted by a barbarism so complete that it ruptured, as one philosopher put it, “the deep layer of solidarity among all who wear a human face.”
When it comes to how societies remember these increasingly distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of history books, archives, documentaries, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time’s Echo, the award-winning critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler makes a passionate and revelatory case for the power of music as culture’s memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past.
With a critic’s ear, a scholar’s erudition, and a novelist’s eye for detail, Eichler shows how four towering composers—Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten—lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving, transcendent works of music, scores that echo lost time. Summoning the supporting testimony of writers, poets, philosophers, musicians, and everyday citizens, Eichler reveals how the essence of an entire epoch has been inscribed in these sounds and stories. Along the way, he visits key locations central to the music’s creation, from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral to the site of the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv.
As the living memory of the Second World War fades, Time’s Echo proposes new ways of listening to history, and learning to hear between its notes the resonances of what another era has written, heard, dreamed, hoped, and mourned. A lyrical narrative full of insight and compassion, this book deepens how we think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the renewed promise of art for our lives today.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published August 29, 2023
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October 6, 2023Here's my review of this book for the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
‘Time’s Echo’ richly explores music and the history of the Holocaust
Jeremy Eichler writes about four prominent composers, exploring how their signature works reflect the horrific times in which they lived.
Review by Martha Anne Toll
October 2, 2023 at 9:00 p.m. ED
In “Time’s Echo,” Jeremy Eichler knits together the history of the Holocaust and classical music before, during and after the cataclysm. Eichler explores two questions: How might we come to “know, honor, commemorate, feel a connection to, or most simply live with the presence of the past?” and how might we return works of art and music to history, so they become “a prism through which we ‘remember’ what was lost?”
Eichler, the chief classical music critic for the Boston Globe and a cultural historian, takes four prominent composers with differing backgrounds and nationalities — Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten — and grounds them in their cultural antecedents, exploring how their signature compositions reflect the horrific times in which they lived. (The more the reader knows about music, the more likely this dense, beautiful book will resonate.) In the key through line, he connects the fluidity of musical time to personal and historical memory. Despite detailed endnotes, “Time’s Echo” is not a reference book. Carefully researched and capacious in scope, it reads as elegy: mournful, elegant and gratifying.
Music is notoriously difficult to get on the page. It is a great challenge to describe the lamentations of specific composers.
We may know Strauss as a gifted composer of tone poems and operas, but he was also someone who had a troubling and opportunistic relationship with Nazi leadership. In an ironic twist, he ended up having to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren from the Nazi maw. We may know Schoenberg as the inventor of the 12-tone row, but here, we also see him as a secular Jew whose prescient efforts to sound the alarm for European Jewry went unheeded.
Eichler organizes chapters around themes, rather than people or events. He weaves in contemporaneous cultural influences from literature, visual arts, philosophy and academia.
The German-Austrian Jewish composers Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler and Schoenberg are considered in the first chapter, where Eichler describes the 19th-century Jewish dream of “emancipation through culture.” He interprets the German word “Bildung” (as in bildungsroman) to signify “a faith in the ability of literature, music, philosophy, and poetry to renovate the self, to shape one’s moral sensibilities, and to guide one toward a life of aesthetic grace.”
Subsequent chapters consider the impact of World War I on what was to come, and what it means both to remember and to forget history’s catastrophes. Nothing points up the psychosis of Nazi ideology better than pairing lofty concepts such as Bildung with the Nazi death machine. A chapter called “The Emancipation of Memory” juxtaposes the Nazi celebration of Friedrich Schiller’s 175th birthday with the story of Schoenberg’s cousin Arthur, a civil engineer who had played a leading role in creating Munich’s buildings and infrastructure. Arthur pleaded with the Munich city council not to nullify his citizenship and subject him to “the tragedy of homelessness” at age 60.
Eichler notes that later scholars would call this type of appeal a reflection of the “bureaucratization of genocide.” Within nine months of being deported to Terezin, Arthur and his wife were dead. The Nazis successfully killed the carefully woven connections between Jewish intellectuals and artists and the concept of Bildung. The genocide was so far beyond imagination that the BBC delayed airing Richard Dimbleby’s real-time descriptions of Bergen-Belsen. The London office just couldn’t believe it.
Encapsulating the literature of trauma, Eichler writes that the survivor cannot move on until the telling of the trauma “has been truly witnessed.” Music is part of that witnessing.
Having performed as a violist in a Britten opera and orchestral pieces, I was particularly moved by Eichler’s discussions of the English composer. Born in the coastal English town of Lowestoft, Britten was an infant when World War I broke out. His uncle was killed in the Battle of the Somme, and a shell fired by the German fleet narrowly missed the family home.
Eichler delves into Britten’s titanic composition “War Requiem,” which premiered in 1962 in the newly consecrated Coventry Cathedral (the original was destroyed by German bombs during World War II). “War Requiem” is scored for two orchestras and an organ. Three vocal soloists and two choirs sing WWI poetry by Wilfred Owen as well as the Latin Requiem. The piece was Britten’s “culminating artistic statement of a life spent responding in varying degrees to the human capacity for cruelty, and society’s capacity for violence against its own members once they had been branded as other.”
A short review does not lend itself to a thorough exploration of a book as rich as this, where a consideration of Shostakovich’s music includes a discussion of Sigmund Freud and Russian poets Anna Akhmatova and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Eichler pairs the music of Paul Hindemith with the literature of W.G. Sebald. Eichler is so taken with Sebald that he adopts the writer’s visual design — uncaptioned photographs interspersed with the text.
Toward the end, Eichler quotes a letter from Shostakovich to Britten that suggests the Russian composer’s tortured relationship with Stalin. The letter provides a wonderful summary for “Time’s Echo”: “Your music is the most outstanding phenomenon of the twentieth century. And for me it is the source of profound and powerful impressions. Write as much as possible. It is necessary for humanity — and certainly for me.”
Martha Anne Toll’s debut novel, “Three Muses,” was published last fall. Her second, “Duet for One,” is forthcoming in early 2025.
‘Time’s Echo’ richly explores music and the history of the Holocaust
Jeremy Eichler writes about four prominent composers, exploring how their signature works reflect the horrific times in which they lived.
Review by Martha Anne Toll
October 2, 2023 at 9:00 p.m. ED
In “Time’s Echo,” Jeremy Eichler knits together the history of the Holocaust and classical music before, during and after the cataclysm. Eichler explores two questions: How might we come to “know, honor, commemorate, feel a connection to, or most simply live with the presence of the past?” and how might we return works of art and music to history, so they become “a prism through which we ‘remember’ what was lost?”
Eichler, the chief classical music critic for the Boston Globe and a cultural historian, takes four prominent composers with differing backgrounds and nationalities — Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten — and grounds them in their cultural antecedents, exploring how their signature compositions reflect the horrific times in which they lived. (The more the reader knows about music, the more likely this dense, beautiful book will resonate.) In the key through line, he connects the fluidity of musical time to personal and historical memory. Despite detailed endnotes, “Time’s Echo” is not a reference book. Carefully researched and capacious in scope, it reads as elegy: mournful, elegant and gratifying.
Music is notoriously difficult to get on the page. It is a great challenge to describe the lamentations of specific composers.
We may know Strauss as a gifted composer of tone poems and operas, but he was also someone who had a troubling and opportunistic relationship with Nazi leadership. In an ironic twist, he ended up having to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren from the Nazi maw. We may know Schoenberg as the inventor of the 12-tone row, but here, we also see him as a secular Jew whose prescient efforts to sound the alarm for European Jewry went unheeded.
Eichler organizes chapters around themes, rather than people or events. He weaves in contemporaneous cultural influences from literature, visual arts, philosophy and academia.
The German-Austrian Jewish composers Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler and Schoenberg are considered in the first chapter, where Eichler describes the 19th-century Jewish dream of “emancipation through culture.” He interprets the German word “Bildung” (as in bildungsroman) to signify “a faith in the ability of literature, music, philosophy, and poetry to renovate the self, to shape one’s moral sensibilities, and to guide one toward a life of aesthetic grace.”
Subsequent chapters consider the impact of World War I on what was to come, and what it means both to remember and to forget history’s catastrophes. Nothing points up the psychosis of Nazi ideology better than pairing lofty concepts such as Bildung with the Nazi death machine. A chapter called “The Emancipation of Memory” juxtaposes the Nazi celebration of Friedrich Schiller’s 175th birthday with the story of Schoenberg’s cousin Arthur, a civil engineer who had played a leading role in creating Munich’s buildings and infrastructure. Arthur pleaded with the Munich city council not to nullify his citizenship and subject him to “the tragedy of homelessness” at age 60.
Eichler notes that later scholars would call this type of appeal a reflection of the “bureaucratization of genocide.” Within nine months of being deported to Terezin, Arthur and his wife were dead. The Nazis successfully killed the carefully woven connections between Jewish intellectuals and artists and the concept of Bildung. The genocide was so far beyond imagination that the BBC delayed airing Richard Dimbleby’s real-time descriptions of Bergen-Belsen. The London office just couldn’t believe it.
Encapsulating the literature of trauma, Eichler writes that the survivor cannot move on until the telling of the trauma “has been truly witnessed.” Music is part of that witnessing.
Having performed as a violist in a Britten opera and orchestral pieces, I was particularly moved by Eichler’s discussions of the English composer. Born in the coastal English town of Lowestoft, Britten was an infant when World War I broke out. His uncle was killed in the Battle of the Somme, and a shell fired by the German fleet narrowly missed the family home.
Eichler delves into Britten’s titanic composition “War Requiem,” which premiered in 1962 in the newly consecrated Coventry Cathedral (the original was destroyed by German bombs during World War II). “War Requiem” is scored for two orchestras and an organ. Three vocal soloists and two choirs sing WWI poetry by Wilfred Owen as well as the Latin Requiem. The piece was Britten’s “culminating artistic statement of a life spent responding in varying degrees to the human capacity for cruelty, and society’s capacity for violence against its own members once they had been branded as other.”
A short review does not lend itself to a thorough exploration of a book as rich as this, where a consideration of Shostakovich’s music includes a discussion of Sigmund Freud and Russian poets Anna Akhmatova and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Eichler pairs the music of Paul Hindemith with the literature of W.G. Sebald. Eichler is so taken with Sebald that he adopts the writer’s visual design — uncaptioned photographs interspersed with the text.
Toward the end, Eichler quotes a letter from Shostakovich to Britten that suggests the Russian composer’s tortured relationship with Stalin. The letter provides a wonderful summary for “Time’s Echo”: “Your music is the most outstanding phenomenon of the twentieth century. And for me it is the source of profound and powerful impressions. Write as much as possible. It is necessary for humanity — and certainly for me.”
Martha Anne Toll’s debut novel, “Three Muses,” was published last fall. Her second, “Duet for One,” is forthcoming in early 2025.
December 12, 2023
If you are a musician involved in any form of what we would call western classical music, then this book is a required read. How does music become a living, breathing memory and in what ways can it help us to remember the history, traumatic or joyous, of humanity's collective existence? That is a question that Mr. Eichler attempts to answer by looking at four composers and four seminal works of remembrance in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Shoah. In discussing these works, he also gives the historical context of music within the three distinct geographies of the composers themselves-Germany, England, and Russia.
I think, now that we are mostly separated by more than one generation from WWII, we are starting to slip into the very apathy and forgetfulness that many authors of the time were afraid of. But this book reveals and reminds us that music, its history, its meaning, the people who write it, the people who perform it, are all brought to full focus again when compositions are performed. Maybe this will help save us from ourselves.
I could write a whole lot more but my thoughts are not connecting well here. Please read and please remember.
I think, now that we are mostly separated by more than one generation from WWII, we are starting to slip into the very apathy and forgetfulness that many authors of the time were afraid of. But this book reveals and reminds us that music, its history, its meaning, the people who write it, the people who perform it, are all brought to full focus again when compositions are performed. Maybe this will help save us from ourselves.
I could write a whole lot more but my thoughts are not connecting well here. Please read and please remember.
November 8, 2023
A work of art. By far the best book I have read on history and music.
January 5, 2024
One of the greatest nonfiction books I've ever read in my entire life. Eichler has managed to blend the expansive personal histories that all connect to what is a defining watershed moment in human history (the Holocaust) to sweeping philosophical and metaphysical questions about art and music. Make no mistake, this is not a niche microhistory book for people who love and listen to a lot of classical music. I know because I am not one of those people and Time's Echo still blew my doors off.
The four composers we follow each looked out their respective windows and tried to capture what resisted all interpretation. The Holocaust was the death of meaning, the moment when humanity had lost its mind and delved into the darkest depths of its malicious soul. It is perhaps the most heinous thing the human animal is capable of and is not likely to be topped. Even the tools of the poets and authors buckle under the weight and admit that they can only bite off small chunks of the event. Nobody can quite capture all of it (and I don't think anyone is saying that these composers succeeded where they failed).
So how did these four composers take a medium as quicksilver and ephemeral as music and use it to pin down the emotions of the time, to immortalize the feeling, and memorialize the dead?
Eichler makes a fascinating case for music as a monument by explaining those invisible connections to some higher truth or plane of existence (another recent read of mine that I read around the same time as Time's Echo, Childhood's End makes a subtle nod to that plane that music exists on and transports us to). Music transcends fact. It is immune to censorship because those who would silence and restrict expression are blind to that beauty and higher truth. The ground-tone's of truth and human connection have been severed, and it becomes the foxhole that artists can burrow in times of strife and conflict.
Many of the composers connect to ongoing discussions about art in surprising ways. Strauss's all-too-eagerness at working with the Nazi's and denying their influence and power while having every door opened to him is instantly recognizable in today's climate of social climbers, careerists, and morally dubious ladders. Shostakovich represents a complex portrait of a man who benefits or suffers from whatever lens you apply to his life where what history rings as true for him largely depends on what the reader and listener want to belive. Fact becomes debatable, up for interpretation. Similarly, the way the USSR sought to censor his work shines a light on the paradigm Russia has with art and how it contrasts so starkly with America. Russia believes in the power of art and America does not. Yet America still engages in censorship because it believes in something it believes to be greater: the market.
One of the most compelling ideas under the microscope is how valid aestheticizing the dead is, especially regarding one of the most horrible tragedies of all time. The push and pull of trivializing these deaths versus using the power of expression to work through grief and chronicle the event through feeling at the time is a satisfying argument where Eichler plays both sides. Ultimately, I am on the side of art and expression, but he gives this element so much weight when its very notion would seem to undermine him and his goals with this book that you cannot help but be amazed when it doesn't and his strength as a writer.
And my goodness, what a revelation Eichler is as a historian. His prose is lush and heartbreaking and he manages to string together some of the most relevant and texturally evocative testimonies and quotes about music, performances, art, philosophy, and history-- all in one package.
Part of my interest in reading this book was a hope to contextualize what I'm seeing right now in Gaza. I found few answers to help grasp how Israel could be capable of something like this when Jews were on the blunt end of injustice the world had never known. My heart continues to grieve for the innocent of the present, and new wounds open for those in the past. Words are our primary tools to communicate and archive the world, but we cannot discount the role and power of music, and the shadow history casts on all art and personhood.
Eichler mentions numerous standing ovations, thundering applause, and intense reactions by audiences. Whether the "correct" response to this book is a raucous shout or a curt nod and a letter sent after the performance, I hope it has come across here. Whether it is appropriate or not, I stand and applaud Time's Echo and beg for an encore from this author.
The four composers we follow each looked out their respective windows and tried to capture what resisted all interpretation. The Holocaust was the death of meaning, the moment when humanity had lost its mind and delved into the darkest depths of its malicious soul. It is perhaps the most heinous thing the human animal is capable of and is not likely to be topped. Even the tools of the poets and authors buckle under the weight and admit that they can only bite off small chunks of the event. Nobody can quite capture all of it (and I don't think anyone is saying that these composers succeeded where they failed).
So how did these four composers take a medium as quicksilver and ephemeral as music and use it to pin down the emotions of the time, to immortalize the feeling, and memorialize the dead?
Eichler makes a fascinating case for music as a monument by explaining those invisible connections to some higher truth or plane of existence (another recent read of mine that I read around the same time as Time's Echo, Childhood's End makes a subtle nod to that plane that music exists on and transports us to). Music transcends fact. It is immune to censorship because those who would silence and restrict expression are blind to that beauty and higher truth. The ground-tone's of truth and human connection have been severed, and it becomes the foxhole that artists can burrow in times of strife and conflict.
Many of the composers connect to ongoing discussions about art in surprising ways. Strauss's all-too-eagerness at working with the Nazi's and denying their influence and power while having every door opened to him is instantly recognizable in today's climate of social climbers, careerists, and morally dubious ladders. Shostakovich represents a complex portrait of a man who benefits or suffers from whatever lens you apply to his life where what history rings as true for him largely depends on what the reader and listener want to belive. Fact becomes debatable, up for interpretation. Similarly, the way the USSR sought to censor his work shines a light on the paradigm Russia has with art and how it contrasts so starkly with America. Russia believes in the power of art and America does not. Yet America still engages in censorship because it believes in something it believes to be greater: the market.
One of the most compelling ideas under the microscope is how valid aestheticizing the dead is, especially regarding one of the most horrible tragedies of all time. The push and pull of trivializing these deaths versus using the power of expression to work through grief and chronicle the event through feeling at the time is a satisfying argument where Eichler plays both sides. Ultimately, I am on the side of art and expression, but he gives this element so much weight when its very notion would seem to undermine him and his goals with this book that you cannot help but be amazed when it doesn't and his strength as a writer.
And my goodness, what a revelation Eichler is as a historian. His prose is lush and heartbreaking and he manages to string together some of the most relevant and texturally evocative testimonies and quotes about music, performances, art, philosophy, and history-- all in one package.
Part of my interest in reading this book was a hope to contextualize what I'm seeing right now in Gaza. I found few answers to help grasp how Israel could be capable of something like this when Jews were on the blunt end of injustice the world had never known. My heart continues to grieve for the innocent of the present, and new wounds open for those in the past. Words are our primary tools to communicate and archive the world, but we cannot discount the role and power of music, and the shadow history casts on all art and personhood.
Eichler mentions numerous standing ovations, thundering applause, and intense reactions by audiences. Whether the "correct" response to this book is a raucous shout or a curt nod and a letter sent after the performance, I hope it has come across here. Whether it is appropriate or not, I stand and applaud Time's Echo and beg for an encore from this author.
February 12, 2024
Having not read a nonfiction book for pleasure in over five years, I approached Time's Echo with existential doubt: was it possible for me to enjoy a story in which every event is a well-researched fact? Yo-Yo Ma, in his advance praise on the back cover, seemed to think so; his word, a non-scholar’s, was enough for me to look past the catch-all subtitle, the eighty pages of back matter, the Columbia Ph.D.—and dive right in.
Within a few pages, Eichler tells us that the book we are about to read draws “particularly deep inspiration” from the novelist W. G. Sebald, an author whose work I know and love. He is the perfect north star for Time’s Echo, in its grappling with great questions of the past through objects, wanderings, and connections.
On objects: Goethe’s oak opens the Prelude and it reappears chapters later as a stump; a statue of Mendelssohn in Leipzig is erected, then destroyed in a bombing, then resurrected with the same message in the Coda; Schiller’s writing desk is cruelly copied for the safekeeping of the original; Benjamin’s monograph by Klee depicts, the author argues, an angel of history. These objects, mere curiosities on their own, serve here as important signposts in time.
On wanderings: I appreciate that Eichler is a character in his own work of history. At the end of select chapters, he visits a location of significance from the text: the Rosé’s residence at Pyrkergasse 23, Strauss’s home in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Schoenberg’s gravestone in Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof, or Coventry Cathedral. Each visit, narrated in the first person, contains a Sebaldian discovery of sorts, that is to say a discovery made in spite of slight disappointment and the lingering question: What am I doing here, really? It feels only fitting that he is denied access to Strauss’s documents—the artifice of nonfiction crumbles when you realize that Time’s Echo was so close to being something else.
On connections: With a novelist’s eye, Eichler locates the episodes from real life that played out with the force of fiction. Schoenberg emigrates to the United States, first settling in Brookline, Massachusetts before heading west to L.A. to be Shirley Temple’s less famous neighbor. He is a stranger in a strange land who finally hears his own music being played at a roadside orange juice stand. One of the book’s most impressive feats is presenting Britten and Shostakovich as independently fierce chroniclers of their nations’ traumas, only to reveal toward the end their mutual admiration and correspondence. And as Britten took his last breaths, Bernstein was conducting Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony (dedicated to none other than B.B. himself) with the New York Philharmonic. Coincidences aside, the life of a composition is plenty cinematic in Eichler’s hand: it was my pleasure—yes, my pleasure!—to read about how each work of music came to be and how the public responded to its premiere.
The cast of characters is superb. I love how prominently Zweig features in the Strauss storyline, how Kandinsky responds to Schoenberg’s revolutionary String Quartet No. 2, how Mann lifts the twelve-tone technique for Doctor Faustus. Lesser-known composers and musicians populate the fringes, like Foulds (with his flawed World Requiem), Walter, and Lasker. This is also an academic manuscript at heart, one arguing for a new interpretation of music’s place in history. Eichler freely employs jargon like Bildung and Innerlichkeit (explained with the utmost clarity) while dazzling us with just-right quotes from Benjamin, Celan, Hemingway, Schafer, and more. He knows the era as if he lived through it, with the additional benefit of hindsight.
Time’s Echo is tapestry nonfiction, the type of nonfiction not about a single person or event or idea but rather about the crosscurrents of an era. It is an ambitious book of ideas that I believe every devotee of music, history, or literature should read at least once. And it showed me, perhaps, where fiction falls short: in nonfiction, since everything is connected by the thread of truth, a tapestry holds fast.
Within a few pages, Eichler tells us that the book we are about to read draws “particularly deep inspiration” from the novelist W. G. Sebald, an author whose work I know and love. He is the perfect north star for Time’s Echo, in its grappling with great questions of the past through objects, wanderings, and connections.
On objects: Goethe’s oak opens the Prelude and it reappears chapters later as a stump; a statue of Mendelssohn in Leipzig is erected, then destroyed in a bombing, then resurrected with the same message in the Coda; Schiller’s writing desk is cruelly copied for the safekeeping of the original; Benjamin’s monograph by Klee depicts, the author argues, an angel of history. These objects, mere curiosities on their own, serve here as important signposts in time.
On wanderings: I appreciate that Eichler is a character in his own work of history. At the end of select chapters, he visits a location of significance from the text: the Rosé’s residence at Pyrkergasse 23, Strauss’s home in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Schoenberg’s gravestone in Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof, or Coventry Cathedral. Each visit, narrated in the first person, contains a Sebaldian discovery of sorts, that is to say a discovery made in spite of slight disappointment and the lingering question: What am I doing here, really? It feels only fitting that he is denied access to Strauss’s documents—the artifice of nonfiction crumbles when you realize that Time’s Echo was so close to being something else.
On connections: With a novelist’s eye, Eichler locates the episodes from real life that played out with the force of fiction. Schoenberg emigrates to the United States, first settling in Brookline, Massachusetts before heading west to L.A. to be Shirley Temple’s less famous neighbor. He is a stranger in a strange land who finally hears his own music being played at a roadside orange juice stand. One of the book’s most impressive feats is presenting Britten and Shostakovich as independently fierce chroniclers of their nations’ traumas, only to reveal toward the end their mutual admiration and correspondence. And as Britten took his last breaths, Bernstein was conducting Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony (dedicated to none other than B.B. himself) with the New York Philharmonic. Coincidences aside, the life of a composition is plenty cinematic in Eichler’s hand: it was my pleasure—yes, my pleasure!—to read about how each work of music came to be and how the public responded to its premiere.
The cast of characters is superb. I love how prominently Zweig features in the Strauss storyline, how Kandinsky responds to Schoenberg’s revolutionary String Quartet No. 2, how Mann lifts the twelve-tone technique for Doctor Faustus. Lesser-known composers and musicians populate the fringes, like Foulds (with his flawed World Requiem), Walter, and Lasker. This is also an academic manuscript at heart, one arguing for a new interpretation of music’s place in history. Eichler freely employs jargon like Bildung and Innerlichkeit (explained with the utmost clarity) while dazzling us with just-right quotes from Benjamin, Celan, Hemingway, Schafer, and more. He knows the era as if he lived through it, with the additional benefit of hindsight.
Time’s Echo is tapestry nonfiction, the type of nonfiction not about a single person or event or idea but rather about the crosscurrents of an era. It is an ambitious book of ideas that I believe every devotee of music, history, or literature should read at least once. And it showed me, perhaps, where fiction falls short: in nonfiction, since everything is connected by the thread of truth, a tapestry holds fast.
February 1, 2024
Absolutely outstanding book, especially for readers who are also lovers and students of classical music. It features primarily four composers: Schoenberg, R. Strauss, Britten and Shostakovich and surrounds them in the Great War, giving us a new view of the war and the Jewish genocide through their music. Each of the four was highly controversial in their work, in their beliefs, and in their musical response to that era, and Eichler described each controversy with originality and with a perspective that delivered shock and surprise over and over. I listened to Schoenberg's disturbing Survivor from Warsaw as I read about his commitment to save Judaism; I listened to Richard Strauss' gorgeous and poignant Metamorphosen as I struggled with my feelings about Strauss himself; I listened to Britten's War Requiem and was deeply moved, learning how he brought the music to life; I listened to Shostakovich's 13th and 14th symphonies and could feel the intense sadness and loss. This is not a biography of these four composers, but more like a historical telling of the tragedy and horror of the Second World War through the eyes of these men and through their music. I must say that the final chapter called Coda: Listening to Lost Time was brilliant. In just a few pages, it pulled together all the biggest ideas and philosophies, and it made me want to read the book again immediately.
So can you enjoy this book if you don't know these composers, and other composers who were important but not one of the central four, such as Bach and Beethoven and Mendelssohn? I think, maybe, but I think the text and the music truly hit home for readers with a decent knowledge about these men, their backgrounds, and their music. I am a relative novice in all of this, but I had enough base knowledge and loads of curiosity, and every word and every note moved me.
So can you enjoy this book if you don't know these composers, and other composers who were important but not one of the central four, such as Bach and Beethoven and Mendelssohn? I think, maybe, but I think the text and the music truly hit home for readers with a decent knowledge about these men, their backgrounds, and their music. I am a relative novice in all of this, but I had enough base knowledge and loads of curiosity, and every word and every note moved me.
October 9, 2023
This is an incredible book, very difficult to read on several levels, but well worth the effort. I initially got the book after reading a review, and fascinated by the concept of music and memory wanted to read this take. After having just returned from a trip to Germany it was a complementary view to reconciling the Holocaust, War and trauma with memorializations in the form of statues and/or musical compositions. An in-depth look at the difficulties and struggles of Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and Dimitri Shostakovich to find their place in history and represent memory of war/atrocities in their work in unique and unprecedented ways. I found that listening to the pieces themselves interspersed with the reading made a very enriching experience. The author's writing style is engaging and poetic itself which enhanced the reading experience. I'm still processing what I read as well as the incredible musical selections I've listened to along the way.
January 16, 2024
I find it difficult to review this book. Depending on my mood, I could just have easily given the book 2 or 3 stars. In sum, it discusses the experiences of four composers in dealing with the second world war and/or the holocaust: Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten, and Dmitri Shostakovich. As the subtitle indicates, it addresses three areas: the second world war, the holocaust, and the music of remembrance. But in none of these areas is the book comprehensive. No discussion of the Terezin composers that I can remember or of any other composers who addressed WWII or the holocaust in their music. I enjoyed the sections on Shostakovich and Schoenberg the most, I did not discover anything new about Richard Strauss, and including Britten was a bit of a stretch. I also had trouble staying awake reading the introduction.
I read this on Kindle; I may have enjoyed it more as an audiobook.
I read this on Kindle; I may have enjoyed it more as an audiobook.
June 4, 2024
This blew me away! I didn’t know if I would really connect with it, since my experience with classical music is positive but casual. While this is complex, nuanced, and detailed it is also clear and understandable, really enlightening! It is more than just about music, it is a philosophical work about the nature of war, history, culture, art, memorialization, memory, and music. Thought-provoking.
I listened to this by Books on Tape, this was great. Production great, reading by the author great. I was worried about the author’s soft voice for about the first thirty seconds, but his voice and reading turned out to be perfect.
My only concern is, when I go and listen to the musical works discussed, will I be able to hear what the author describes with my untrained ears?
I listened to this by Books on Tape, this was great. Production great, reading by the author great. I was worried about the author’s soft voice for about the first thirty seconds, but his voice and reading turned out to be perfect.
My only concern is, when I go and listen to the musical works discussed, will I be able to hear what the author describes with my untrained ears?
January 10, 2024
A great book for lovers of 20th century classical music and its history. This book attempts a lot, and succeeds at most of it. Being familiar with the four main composers and their works/contributions will certainly help, but the technical writing about music is clearly presented, and enhances careful listening of the highlighted pieces. My one gripe is that the author’s stated attempt to channel Sebald doesn’t quite work. The Sebaldian tropes are there, but the author is pursuing a bit too pointed of an agenda to properly channel the softness and haziness of a great Sebald work.
December 11, 2023
Simply a revelation of history, music, moment, place, distortion, people and intention. Jeremy amazes me with his historical command and confidence, yet never leaving you behind to figure out what just passed you by.
He is a deliberate guide, passionate for the story he sees and discovers, and dedicated to expounding and challenging us all.
I have rarely been able to say "I couldn't put down a work of history". I said it every time I had to put this down, but was bummed to do so.
He is a deliberate guide, passionate for the story he sees and discovers, and dedicated to expounding and challenging us all.
I have rarely been able to say "I couldn't put down a work of history". I said it every time I had to put this down, but was bummed to do so.
January 29, 2024
Only music speaks to me, when others turn away their eyes
September 21, 2024
Grandioses Buch, auch für Leute, die sich noch nicht für klassische Musik begeistern konnten.
February 16, 2024
I have read books where the author's facility with words makes for wonderful reading, and I have read books where the plot or underlying narrative is powerful and moving. It's when a book combines those two attributes that magic happens. Times Echo is one of those books.
I was drawn to the book because of the idea. Eichler's purpose with Times Echo is to tell the story of how the events of WWII and the Holocaust affected the work of four of the towering composers of the 20th century (Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten, and Dmitri Shostakovich), each of whom lived through the experience. In doing so, he makes a powerful case for the music as a living eternal memorial to the fallen. But more than that, he argues that these memorials of sound convey a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust and the war. In addition, Eichler gives us a glimpse inside the political and cultural settings of each composer's homeland (including Germany, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S.) and how those societies influenced their perspective on this horrifying moment in human history.
Understanding the personal, social, and cultural circumstances of the composers proved to be far more powerful than I anticipated. To hear, for example, how Benjamin Britten's post war musical performance at a concentration camp turned displaced persons camp profoundly moved him and how it influenced and guided his brilliant War Requiem composition, gives deeper meaning to the work. Similarly, it is shocking to hear of Arnold Schoenberg's warning of impending catastrophe long before all-out war or the first indications of the Holocaust had surfaced. And it's just as moving to realize that his brilliant composition A Survivor From Warsaw received a mixed response because it served so directly as a Holocaust narrative at a time when telling the story of the Holocaust wasn't done. (As an aside, I learned quite a bit I did not know about how the Holocaust was perceived immediately following the war and how the horror of it seemed to prevent real reflection and acceptance of the depth of human evil in that moment. Perhaps we just could not face it, but the way we approach Holocaust narrative today is not what it was then).
Eichler's book tells a story of the Holocaust and the war from a perspective that I never considered. He argues that the four masterpieces he discusses are memorials that reflect their times and yet are somehow timeless. "The notion of a timeless masterpiece is deeply ingrained in the culture, and music does flout the laws of time in mysterious and near-miraculous ways. But what the poet and survivor Paul Celan wrote about a poem also holds true for a work of music: it still travels through time, and through history, to reach us - 'through it, not above and beyond it.' And a work of art cannot make this trip unscathed. The music of Beethoven, for instance, should not sound the same before and after Auschwitz."
And here I return to my original comment in this review. In addition to the power of the story, Eichler's writing is brilliant and evocative. I have not heard all of the pieces discussed in the book, and yet the language the author uses to describe the work made me feel as if I were not just listening to it, but truly inside the music. I could almost hear the rise and fall of the strings or the moment of dissonance. Eichler is a music critic (and historian) by profession, so it is not surprising that he can eloquently describe works of music. Yet, his words are transformative. Transporting the reader from where they are into a new place. One cannot ask more than this of an author.
Time's Echo is a brilliant, mournful, and deeply insightful reflection on the power of music as remembrance and offers insights into the Holocaust and the war that I had not anticipated. I very rarely give five-star reviews, reserving that rating for works that are transformative for me personally. This didn't quite reach that height; only 19 of my 790 reviews have. But it came very close. I would give this 4.75 stars. It is a brilliant work of art in its own right.
I was drawn to the book because of the idea. Eichler's purpose with Times Echo is to tell the story of how the events of WWII and the Holocaust affected the work of four of the towering composers of the 20th century (Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten, and Dmitri Shostakovich), each of whom lived through the experience. In doing so, he makes a powerful case for the music as a living eternal memorial to the fallen. But more than that, he argues that these memorials of sound convey a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust and the war. In addition, Eichler gives us a glimpse inside the political and cultural settings of each composer's homeland (including Germany, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S.) and how those societies influenced their perspective on this horrifying moment in human history.
Understanding the personal, social, and cultural circumstances of the composers proved to be far more powerful than I anticipated. To hear, for example, how Benjamin Britten's post war musical performance at a concentration camp turned displaced persons camp profoundly moved him and how it influenced and guided his brilliant War Requiem composition, gives deeper meaning to the work. Similarly, it is shocking to hear of Arnold Schoenberg's warning of impending catastrophe long before all-out war or the first indications of the Holocaust had surfaced. And it's just as moving to realize that his brilliant composition A Survivor From Warsaw received a mixed response because it served so directly as a Holocaust narrative at a time when telling the story of the Holocaust wasn't done. (As an aside, I learned quite a bit I did not know about how the Holocaust was perceived immediately following the war and how the horror of it seemed to prevent real reflection and acceptance of the depth of human evil in that moment. Perhaps we just could not face it, but the way we approach Holocaust narrative today is not what it was then).
Eichler's book tells a story of the Holocaust and the war from a perspective that I never considered. He argues that the four masterpieces he discusses are memorials that reflect their times and yet are somehow timeless. "The notion of a timeless masterpiece is deeply ingrained in the culture, and music does flout the laws of time in mysterious and near-miraculous ways. But what the poet and survivor Paul Celan wrote about a poem also holds true for a work of music: it still travels through time, and through history, to reach us - 'through it, not above and beyond it.' And a work of art cannot make this trip unscathed. The music of Beethoven, for instance, should not sound the same before and after Auschwitz."
And here I return to my original comment in this review. In addition to the power of the story, Eichler's writing is brilliant and evocative. I have not heard all of the pieces discussed in the book, and yet the language the author uses to describe the work made me feel as if I were not just listening to it, but truly inside the music. I could almost hear the rise and fall of the strings or the moment of dissonance. Eichler is a music critic (and historian) by profession, so it is not surprising that he can eloquently describe works of music. Yet, his words are transformative. Transporting the reader from where they are into a new place. One cannot ask more than this of an author.
Time's Echo is a brilliant, mournful, and deeply insightful reflection on the power of music as remembrance and offers insights into the Holocaust and the war that I had not anticipated. I very rarely give five-star reviews, reserving that rating for works that are transformative for me personally. This didn't quite reach that height; only 19 of my 790 reviews have. But it came very close. I would give this 4.75 stars. It is a brilliant work of art in its own right.
February 15, 2024
This book has received accolades galore. They're well-deserved. My husband and I read this in preparation of an author conversation with writer Franklin Foer on Zoom. The book covers compositions by 4 famous composers in the immediate aftermath of WWII, focused on the Holocaust. The premiers of their works presented the world with a musical narrative/memorial/lament/critique of the atrocities wrought on civilization by the Nazis and their personal struggles to cope with what they experienced/witnessed. As time passed, and reactions to these compositions evolved, music competed with physical testaments (or the absence of them) to the hideous actions many wanted to forget or pretend never happened. Music kept memory alive, when monuments were destroyed. I couldn't give the book five stars because I felt the author omitted any reference to Jewish composers writing music while interred in the concentration camp in Terazin, Theresienstadt. Some of that music survives, written by: Victor Ullmann, Hans Krasa, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas,and Ilse Weber . The Terezin composers all were ordered to compose, so that the Nazis could show the world the Camps weren't so bad after all; then they killed the composers in 1944, whose music was not meant to memorialize or criticize like the music of Shostakovich, Britten, Schoenberg, and Strauss. I believe Eichler erred by failing to mention their existence.The works of all of these composers continues to be performed. Otherwise, this book is excellent and serves as a wonderful backdrop to listening to the music whose creation stories are told within its covers.
March 2, 2024
I did not finish this book. The book appeared to be well researched, but it read too much like a textbook designed for classical music lovers. I am confident that there is an audience for this book, and will pass it along accordingly. {H}
February 20, 2024
It would be hard to find a human who hasn't experienced an ear worm: a tune that suddenly springs into the brain and plays itself like a tape on a loop again and again and again. Such experiences can be irritating. More often, they carry us back to a time past, to places and events suddenly vivid, almost real.
Such is the power of music, that most abstract of the arts.
We remember music. Music also remembers us. So argues Jeremy Eichler, chief music critic of The Boston Globe and author of Time's Echo: The Second World, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance.
In it Eichler blends cultural and musical history by examining four composers -- Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Britten and Shostakovich -- as the four remembered some of the horrors of World War II through their music. Readers with at least a basic knowledge of classical music and 20th century history will find this deeply researched book a delight. But even such readers likely will find themselves cracking open YouTube recordings of the music referenced.
Words on paper can never convey the effects of the music itself (Eichler sometimes resorts to such attempts, but rarely wanders too far into the music terminology weeds). And like all concert music, it must be listened to again and again before it is heard. In many ways, that's especially true of the four pieces that are the centerpiece of Eichler's book: Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw, Shostakovich's Babi Ya Symphony, Britten's War Requiem, and Strauss' Metamorphosen.
The stories behind these works (and many others) that Eichler weaves throughout the book are fascinating in their own right, offering as they do a new perspective to the awful events they describe. They also serve the purpose of detailing just how intertwined art is with the history in which it was produced.
And about that history: Eichler's descriptions can be stark. To cite but one example, the 33,000 Ukrainian Jews shot by Germans in two days and bury in a ditch at Babi Yar. Shostakovich wants us to remember this. His music demands it.
The events these four works recall occurred in the second third of the 20th century, but the connective tissue making them possibly goes back decades, sometimes centuries earlier. Eichler weaves all this together in a fascinating and important look at history that too often his been ignored and too often suppressed.
These are not works likely to become ear worms. They are works worthy of knowing and appreciating. Eichler's book provides a gateway.
Such is the power of music, that most abstract of the arts.
We remember music. Music also remembers us. So argues Jeremy Eichler, chief music critic of The Boston Globe and author of Time's Echo: The Second World, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance.
In it Eichler blends cultural and musical history by examining four composers -- Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Britten and Shostakovich -- as the four remembered some of the horrors of World War II through their music. Readers with at least a basic knowledge of classical music and 20th century history will find this deeply researched book a delight. But even such readers likely will find themselves cracking open YouTube recordings of the music referenced.
Words on paper can never convey the effects of the music itself (Eichler sometimes resorts to such attempts, but rarely wanders too far into the music terminology weeds). And like all concert music, it must be listened to again and again before it is heard. In many ways, that's especially true of the four pieces that are the centerpiece of Eichler's book: Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw, Shostakovich's Babi Ya Symphony, Britten's War Requiem, and Strauss' Metamorphosen.
The stories behind these works (and many others) that Eichler weaves throughout the book are fascinating in their own right, offering as they do a new perspective to the awful events they describe. They also serve the purpose of detailing just how intertwined art is with the history in which it was produced.
And about that history: Eichler's descriptions can be stark. To cite but one example, the 33,000 Ukrainian Jews shot by Germans in two days and bury in a ditch at Babi Yar. Shostakovich wants us to remember this. His music demands it.
The events these four works recall occurred in the second third of the 20th century, but the connective tissue making them possibly goes back decades, sometimes centuries earlier. Eichler weaves all this together in a fascinating and important look at history that too often his been ignored and too often suppressed.
These are not works likely to become ear worms. They are works worthy of knowing and appreciating. Eichler's book provides a gateway.
February 6, 2024
This is, really, four books rolled into one. It's a compelling history of certain aspects of WWII and the Holocaust, an analysis of certain giants of 20th century western music, a reflection on memory and memorials, and a light but effective philosophy on the role of art and its relevance to trauma. If there is anywhere where I disagreed with the book, it is only on certain aspects of this last part, on the relationship between art and trauma. Some of the reflections contained here are Eichler's own, and I did not always agree with him. But even where I disagreed, I found Eichler thoughtful, and there weren't more than 3 or 4 pages of content where I had any disagreement at all.
I found myself fascinated by the whole book, in all of its many subjects and indirect paths. However, it was some of the minor players in the story that left me the most deeply affected. I was enthralled learning more about both Mendelssohns, Alfred and Alma Rose, and Anita Lasker (who at the time I write this, is still alive, at the age of 98). The main subjects of the book were already on my radar (although I learned a lot about them here), but these other subjects were either new to me (Rose and Lasker), or I knew them but too little about them (the Mendelssohns).
The book is written luminously, so much so that it runs the risk of making a hypocrite out of its author. Eichler reasons that trauma and art have a contentious relationship, and that aestheticizing trauma creates ethical conundrums. Well, this book relays times of trauma with artistic fervor, and the prose features wonderfully artistic descriptions and turns of phrase. I've read some 1,500 books or more, and this is one of the most evocatively and beautifully written books I've ever read. This book will likely not get the wide readership it deserves, because of its niche subject matter, but I do not think a reader needs to be interested in anything less than humanity itself to enjoy the book.
I found myself fascinated by the whole book, in all of its many subjects and indirect paths. However, it was some of the minor players in the story that left me the most deeply affected. I was enthralled learning more about both Mendelssohns, Alfred and Alma Rose, and Anita Lasker (who at the time I write this, is still alive, at the age of 98). The main subjects of the book were already on my radar (although I learned a lot about them here), but these other subjects were either new to me (Rose and Lasker), or I knew them but too little about them (the Mendelssohns).
The book is written luminously, so much so that it runs the risk of making a hypocrite out of its author. Eichler reasons that trauma and art have a contentious relationship, and that aestheticizing trauma creates ethical conundrums. Well, this book relays times of trauma with artistic fervor, and the prose features wonderfully artistic descriptions and turns of phrase. I've read some 1,500 books or more, and this is one of the most evocatively and beautifully written books I've ever read. This book will likely not get the wide readership it deserves, because of its niche subject matter, but I do not think a reader needs to be interested in anything less than humanity itself to enjoy the book.
June 14, 2024
I longed for my dad to be alive when I listened to this beautiful non fiction examination of some of the 19th and 20th century’s great composers, including Arnold Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Strauss & Benjamin Britten.
Really it is about how these men attempted to create music to memorialize both world wars while sometimes being threatened themselves with deportation or worse.
Their careers were often dependent on whichever government was in charge, creating a life and death roller coaster and accompanying emotional scars and trauma.
I am doing a poor job of describing a book that feels so monumental to me. I am not a music scholar at all, but the descriptions of the music were so intensely affecting they brought me to the playlist which contains all the music mentioned. Unhappily, many of the pieces need to be experience live, and rarely do they make it to any concert halls. Still, I can listen and absorb and imagine what went in to creating these pieces.
I wanted to talk to my father about the music, which I bet he had contained in his stash of fastidiously preserved classical records. I wanted to talk to him about whether he liked the twelve tone music compositions of Schoenberg, how he felt about Strauss trying to appease the Nazi party and then becoming a pariah to his former friends.
Listening to this book while at the same time reading the Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, which includes passages about WW1, I felt immersed in that time.
Scholarly as it is I was able to understand and follow all of it, and it leaves me wanting more, as is always the case with a truly great book.
Thank you Jeremy Eichler.
Really it is about how these men attempted to create music to memorialize both world wars while sometimes being threatened themselves with deportation or worse.
Their careers were often dependent on whichever government was in charge, creating a life and death roller coaster and accompanying emotional scars and trauma.
I am doing a poor job of describing a book that feels so monumental to me. I am not a music scholar at all, but the descriptions of the music were so intensely affecting they brought me to the playlist which contains all the music mentioned. Unhappily, many of the pieces need to be experience live, and rarely do they make it to any concert halls. Still, I can listen and absorb and imagine what went in to creating these pieces.
I wanted to talk to my father about the music, which I bet he had contained in his stash of fastidiously preserved classical records. I wanted to talk to him about whether he liked the twelve tone music compositions of Schoenberg, how he felt about Strauss trying to appease the Nazi party and then becoming a pariah to his former friends.
Listening to this book while at the same time reading the Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, which includes passages about WW1, I felt immersed in that time.
Scholarly as it is I was able to understand and follow all of it, and it leaves me wanting more, as is always the case with a truly great book.
Thank you Jeremy Eichler.
December 25, 2023
This audiobook was narrated beautifully by the author. (I only wish it had included at least sections of the musical works discussed. A lost opportunity, but probably precluded by the cost of the rights.)
This fascinating book is mostly about how music captures memory. The specific music involved is four pieces composed in the aftermath of World War II that were intended as memorials to the horrible war and the Shoah. After an overlong and somewhat abstract introduction, the author gets down to business, giving extended biographies of his four composers and their place in European classical music. The four are Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Brittain, and Shostakovich. He describes how they came to write the four pieces he discusses, the stories of their first performances and how they have been received. He closes with a short discussion of music and memory. The stories alone would make the book worthwhile but the discussion of how music conveys content (emotional, biographical, historical) is also excellent. As someone who appreciates the emotional power of music but has doubts about how it conveys specific content - especially in the absence of words - I don’t find myself convinced but realize that there is a lot I don’t understand or yet appreciate. The author doesn’t completely disagree with me as he discuses how a piece of music can mean one thing to an audience hearing it at its premiere but can mean something completely different to a later audience. But he makes it clear that the composers intended to convey more than just emotion.
This fascinating book is mostly about how music captures memory. The specific music involved is four pieces composed in the aftermath of World War II that were intended as memorials to the horrible war and the Shoah. After an overlong and somewhat abstract introduction, the author gets down to business, giving extended biographies of his four composers and their place in European classical music. The four are Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Brittain, and Shostakovich. He describes how they came to write the four pieces he discusses, the stories of their first performances and how they have been received. He closes with a short discussion of music and memory. The stories alone would make the book worthwhile but the discussion of how music conveys content (emotional, biographical, historical) is also excellent. As someone who appreciates the emotional power of music but has doubts about how it conveys specific content - especially in the absence of words - I don’t find myself convinced but realize that there is a lot I don’t understand or yet appreciate. The author doesn’t completely disagree with me as he discuses how a piece of music can mean one thing to an audience hearing it at its premiere but can mean something completely different to a later audience. But he makes it clear that the composers intended to convey more than just emotion.
December 27, 2023
This is a simply outstanding book. It’s the best book I’ve ever read. It shines a light on to how music, or sound, creates an eternal, inescapable memory on events of the past. It does focus on events of the last century for obvious reasons, as they’re etched on to our memories because of the close proximity as well as the obvious fact that memories are better documented with the dawn of photography and printing.
It would have been interesting to go back in time and see how some of Beethoven's works preserved political movements and battles of the time etc. however the four composers focused on were so well presented and expertly done so. I know about Shostakovich and his eternal struggles against the soviet leadership, however there was still a wealth of information I didn’t know about. The whole debate around Richard Strauss and where he stood in the fascist regime (can’t say the real word in case my review gets banned) was fascinating, and though unresolved, does give me an entirely different light on a composer who has always been in high esteem. If you are any kind of music buff, or interested in philosophical aspects of the past and how art represents events and tragedies, this book is essential. An absolutely compelling read.
It would have been interesting to go back in time and see how some of Beethoven's works preserved political movements and battles of the time etc. however the four composers focused on were so well presented and expertly done so. I know about Shostakovich and his eternal struggles against the soviet leadership, however there was still a wealth of information I didn’t know about. The whole debate around Richard Strauss and where he stood in the fascist regime (can’t say the real word in case my review gets banned) was fascinating, and though unresolved, does give me an entirely different light on a composer who has always been in high esteem. If you are any kind of music buff, or interested in philosophical aspects of the past and how art represents events and tragedies, this book is essential. An absolutely compelling read.
September 15, 2023
This is an ambitious, wide-ranging, and beautiful book. Focusing on four compositions written in memorial to World War II and the Holocaust, Eichler writes about the power of music not only to be immediately expressive but also to preserve the moment and emotions of the time of composition. He describes four compositions -- Arnold Schoenberg's "A Survivor from Warsaw," Richard Strauss's "Metamorphosen," Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," and Dmitri Shotakovich's 13th Symphony, "Babi Yar," in terms of their musical values, the history of their composition and premiere performances, and the place of the composers in music history, all in terms that a non-musician can readily understand. The book has a strong philosophical underpinning, tracing the fate of Enlightenment values under the perversion of Naziism. I found reading it to be a profoundly moving experience, and was in tears many times. Of course the subject matter of World War II and the Holocaust is, still, an emotional one in and of itself, but Eichler earned my reaction through his prose style and his empathy. I think it's an important book, and I look forward to re-reading it already.
January 23, 2024
This is a landmark work addressing the artistic and social response to the atrocities perpetuated on the Jews by the Third Reich and others. In so doing, the work destroys the distinctions we use to compartmentalize our various experiences and worldviews-- certainly world history and music(ology) are merged here, but so to is philosophy and sociology and psychology, maybe even a dab of physiology. That time is not an orderly constant became clearer to me in this work than in my college relativity courses.
The research and presentation are impeccable, but the integration of the facts and the derived insights are very fine and thought provoking. Eichler puts into context the works and artists emerging from the shambles, each injured in specific ways. This book is certainly among the best non-fiction works I have ever encountered.
A warning: Accounts and manifestations of the dark side of humanity are very present in this work, and limited only to naziism. While there are stories of ephemeral beauty and triumph, there are very concrete stories and impacts on countless innocents. For me it was and is quite sobering.
The research and presentation are impeccable, but the integration of the facts and the derived insights are very fine and thought provoking. Eichler puts into context the works and artists emerging from the shambles, each injured in specific ways. This book is certainly among the best non-fiction works I have ever encountered.
A warning: Accounts and manifestations of the dark side of humanity are very present in this work, and limited only to naziism. While there are stories of ephemeral beauty and triumph, there are very concrete stories and impacts on countless innocents. For me it was and is quite sobering.
May 5, 2024
Jeremy Eichler ci regala un opera che ci costringe a riflettere sugli effetti che lo scorrere del tempo ha sugli eventi del passato. In particolare i drammi del ventesimo secolo con le sue guerre, con l’abisso dell’Olocausto sono minacciati dall’oblio legato alla naturale scomparsa di chi c’era e dal revisionismo storico contingente alle convenienze politiche del momento. Eichler ci fa comprendere come a soccorrerci a conservare “l’eco del tempo” è più di tutti la musica che attraverso i capolavori dei suoi massimi geni riesce a fissare i drammi della nostra civiltà in maniera imperitura. Quattro grandi musicisti come Strauss, Schonberg, Britten e Sostakovic con le loro opere monumento sono riusciti a rendere immortali alcuni momenti fondamentali del XX secolo meglio e più a lungo di quanto possa fare qualsiasi tipo di memoriale. Questo libro ci fa comprendere la potenza unica della musica e l’emozione profonda, ineguagliabile, che un ascolto attento di essa riesce a suscitare meglio di qualsiasi altro mezzo. Se la Storia, i suoi insegnamenti e l’impellenza di non perderne la memoria sono qualcosa che vi affascina questo libro è da leggere assolutamente.
May 16, 2024
One of the best books I've read in a very long time. I knew very little about the musicians or pieces the author talks about so I read the book very slowly. I needed to stop and find recordings of, say, Strauss's Metamorphosen but taking the extra time was well worth the effort. Eichler intertwines biographies of the four composers into an historical context of the compositions. He does this so the reader can almost witness the births of the pieces and see them as the statements of hope and optimism the composers meant them to be. The personal sacrifice each made to produce these lasting messages in a bottle were breathtaking and profoundly moving. Eichler quotes Proust: "Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain unknown to us... Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own .... we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists."
January 3, 2024
I doubt too many would disagree that art can convey a message whether it be profound or frivolous. And as far as music is concerned there is often a connection to our memories. Eichler in this excellent book discusses how music acts as a "repository of cultural memory". He looks at the lives and work of four composers (Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten, and Dmitri Shostakovich) and describes how their lives were affected by the rise of Nazi Germany, World War II, the Holocaust and the totalitarian Soviet government under Stalin. He then focuses on their music, with particular emphasis on one notable late composition of each. He effectively shows how these works memorialize the carnage of WW II and the catastrophe of the Holocaust ( e.g. Shostakovich's 13th "Babi Yar" Symphony), a function that grows in significance as the generation that experienced these traumas fades away.
September 17, 2024
Time's Echo looks at four composers and the "music of remembrance" that they wrote following WWI and WWII. It's fascinating from musical, biographical, historical, and philosophical angles.
Eichler focuses more on WWII, but the composers' philosophy and culture was formed by WWI and this comes through a lot in the book.
(I think I would have enjoyed this more as a print book. I listened to the audiobook, because I was hoping it would include at least snippets of the music like Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, but alas, it did not. However, Joshua Weilerstein of the Sticky Notes Podcast did an episode with Eichler a while back, which does include snippets.)
Eichler focuses more on WWII, but the composers' philosophy and culture was formed by WWI and this comes through a lot in the book.
(I think I would have enjoyed this more as a print book. I listened to the audiobook, because I was hoping it would include at least snippets of the music like Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, but alas, it did not. However, Joshua Weilerstein of the Sticky Notes Podcast did an episode with Eichler a while back, which does include snippets.)
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September 30, 2023I likely won't read this book because: Although I adore classical music, these four pieces, while illustrating the author's theme perhaps marvelously, never resonated with me personally. As an aside: At the risk of being pedestrian and not trying to make a particular statement, my choice of favorites by these composers would be: Schoenberg's orchestral Transfigured Night (inspired by a moving poem, radiantly captured in music); Strauss's two French horn concertos (written early and late in life, a tribute to his father who played the instrument); Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto (whose beguiling lush middle movement sounds like melancholy film score); Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (yes; an old English composer's interwoven melody is irresistible here). Different moods indeed, check these out!
February 6, 2024
Tbh I can't even tell you why I decided to pick this book up. It's a dense, technical book and I STRUGGLED getting through it.
Every time I put it down I told myself I could take a break and read something easier for a little bit, and then every time I sat down to read this was all I wanted to pick up. I don't know how many hours I spent on these 300 pages but there was something beautiful about taking the time to truly understand a perspective on WWII I hadn't experienced before. I really appreciated the way that eichler wrote a very technical nonfiction but held space for the humanity and inhumanity inherent in the holocaust and never lost sight of what was truly important.
This book just really was so meaningful, I'm still crying while typing this
Every time I put it down I told myself I could take a break and read something easier for a little bit, and then every time I sat down to read this was all I wanted to pick up. I don't know how many hours I spent on these 300 pages but there was something beautiful about taking the time to truly understand a perspective on WWII I hadn't experienced before. I really appreciated the way that eichler wrote a very technical nonfiction but held space for the humanity and inhumanity inherent in the holocaust and never lost sight of what was truly important.
This book just really was so meaningful, I'm still crying while typing this
February 11, 2024
Quoting from a prize committee description on this amazing book about how four composers Schoenberg, Strauss, Britten, and Shostakovich responded musically to World War II and the Holocaust, but also about so much more and especially on the task and multiple valences of memory: “Stunned by its profundity, its masterful structure, its beautiful shimmering sentences... It has an utterly unique voice, and it warrants being classed as a masterpiece of nonfiction writing.” Eichler explains the task of a memorialist as a historian angled toward the future and his explorations of music and its response to the horrors of World War II accomplish just this. A true masterpiece that I will recommend to everybody and anybody.
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