Recovering Forbidden Voices
The New Zealand School of Music is hosting a conference highlighting music composed in ghettos and concentration camps.
In rehearsal
To be held in Wellington from August 22-25 the conference will memorialise composers who were victims in WWII.
The subject of the suppression and banning of music during World War Two, particularly during the Nazi regime, has in recent years become the focus of research across a wide range of fields, including musicology, history, exile studies, trauma studies, and life history. This conference will feature both performances and scholarly papers.
The conference works and themes will be strongly related to the music written in ghettos, concentration camps, and in exile, along with works classified and banned by the Nazis as ‘Entartete Musik’. The term is literally translated as ‘degenerate music’ but it would be more accurate to describe it as suppressed or forbidden music. It is not only the music written in this period that will be the subject of the conference – music and ideas that preceded World War Two and those that have resulted or been created since in response to the atrocities and tragedy of that time will also feature.
Included will be keynote addresses from international authors Michael Haas and Tanya Tintner and composer Laurence Sherr, four panel presentation sessions from academics including guest speakers and performers from Belgium, Israel, and Australia as well as New Zealand, full performances of the children’s opera Brundibar as well as opera excerpts, two orchestra concerts, nine chamber music concerts, and a film screening. Performers include professional performance staff from NZSM, including the New Zealand String Quartet, and NZSO players as well as students and alumni.
For more information and registration www.nzsm.ac.nz/events/conferences-and-seminars
