A review by kirkdean547
Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler

5.0

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.