A musical score made of Holocaust voices

A musical score made of Holocaust voices

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norman lebrecht

April 12, 2021

The Austrian composer Lukas Ligeti, son of the Hungarian-Jewish exile, has created a hypnotic collage of recorded Holocaust interviews with intuitive musical responses by a gropu of musicians.

He says: ‘That Which Has Remained … That Which Will Emerge … is a meditation on aural memory and freely-associative ideas inspired by these memories, and the way culture defies destruction in the face of oppression and genocide.’

I’m not sure it does, but the recording – out on Col Legno – is the most significant of its kind since Steve Reich’s Different Trains. It’s a route to memories that must not be forgotten.

 

Comments

  • Bratsche brat says:

    Gropu, is that the dark side of Grogu? The font and text colour in that video looks like Star Wars, too. Certainly a much better look than the new Slippedisc website design. Please change it!

  • yujafan says:

    If he’s anything like his father as a composer, this should be nothing less than thought provoking to say the least.

  • complete senseless mischigas

  • John Borstlap says:

    It appears that the ‘composer’ did not do anything musical. He has not ‘created’ a work at all. It is conceptual art, of the usual lazy untalented kind, dressed-up with heavy holocaust references so that listeners HAVE to appreciate it, to avoid being suspected of antisemitic feelings. I think it’s quite disgusting, to appropriate such historic material and to parade with it as a ‘musical work’, using emotional blackmail.

    • Willis says:

      Black Lives are more important than white now.

    • John Borstlap says:

      I say that on a regular basis. But nobody listens to me here! He says that where normal people relax at their golf course he bullies people on SD after a day’s hard work. But most of the work is done by me.

      Sally

    • Mr. Knowitall says:

      Although I don’t know you, Mr. Borstlap, some of your work is available on youTube and I gave it a listen. It was a long slog sitting through such weak pseudo-romantic drivel, much like many of the scores for second-rate movies from the middle of the 20th century.

      I do know Lukas Ligeti. He is in fact talented and skilled and, unlike you, interested in musical exploration. Some pieces work. Some don’t. That’s the cost of breaking ground.

      Lukas comes by his interest in the Holocaust honestly. His father survived a forced labor camp. His uncle and grandfather died in concentration camps. It is abhorrent for you to suggest that he is using antisemitism as extortion, a threat to prevent criticism of his work.

      And of course Lukas comes by his interest in experimental music through his father. You should be so lucky as to produce one work as interesting as anything either of them has composed.

      • John Borstlap says:

        It’s all very difficult, isn’t it? I would say: never give up!

        The fact of Mr Ligeti’s ancestral background makes his product all the more despiccable.

        And, by the way, which is clear from your enthusiasm of Mr Ligeti’s ‘music’, the stuff I write is obviously not for your ears, I’m very happy to say.

        Interestingly, almost all people with an unexplained and unexpliccable love for conceptual music, look at classical music in the way a convict tries to see the world through the narrow bars of his window. It’s quite understandable that the walls get on their nerves.

        • Mr. Knowitall says:

          Fun to pat yourself on the back, isn’t it. My love for good classical is deep. The issue I have with yours is that it is mundane crap.

          • John Borstlap says:

            Yes I know, I have to regularly endure the most painful embarrassments, and while I know it all because the stuff is played over the speakers all the time (and everywhere, even in the corridors), I can’t get used to it. When it distracts too much from the work I take refuge into the cellar and play my favorite, Pli selon Pli, I got the CD signed by PB himself in a moment of mental absence after a concert with his Ensemble Intercontemptorain. Thank God for sound art! It’s calming on the nerves.

            Sally

        • W. Devonshire says:

          Black Lives Matter is today’s marketing tool. The holocaust is long played out babe.

          • John Borstlap says:

            Well, it’s easy to replace Jews with Blacks and affect a comparable emotional blackmailing. ‘You think this is a bad piece? You are probably a racist!’

      • Tom says:

        Well stated. Lukas is one of the more important new music composers.

    • BRUCEB says:

      He never likes living composers.

      I can understand why: he is one himself 😀

      • John Borstlap says:

        Very funny and well appreciated.

        But it is obvious nonsense, which is clear from anybody who has read my book.

        I dislike people claiming to be composers while they are sonic artists, which is like butchers claiming to be lawyers. Look at them how they enter the court room with their blood-smeared attire, claiming their place at the benches.

  • Tesra says:

    SlippedDisc should seriously consider closing down its Comments section.

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