Presenter:
This session looks back at great art accomplished under extreme duress. The presenters will discuss and then perform the final musical work for stage by Viktor Ullmann entitled “The Chronicle of Love and Death of the Flag Bearer Christoph Rilke.” Based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s great prose-poem about the futility and finality of war, the “Chronicle” was conceived for dramatic speaker and piano as a Liebestod, in which love as an external force conquers death. Ullmann composed these musical sketches during autumn 1944 when he was in the Terezín concentration camp before being deported and murdered at Auschwitz. They weave the haunting music into a discussion about themes of exile and diaspora in modern Jewish history.