Composing about concentration camps: eisler, schoenberg, and human rights

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although scholars have typically studied the Nazi concentration camp system through a political and military analysis, another approach is to consider how composers depicted the Holocaust. This article places two works about concentration camps in relation to human rights issues: Hanns Eisler's German Symphony (1935-58) and his mentor Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw (1947). Both compositions rely heavily on texts to communicate their message. The article integrates Mark Philip Bradley's idea about the ‘global human rights imagination’: how nonstate actors, such as creative artists, could contribute to discussions about human rights through their art form or profession.