Musical sources survived in the Collection of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Cover Image

Musical sources survived in the Collection of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Musical sources survived in the Collection of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

Author(s): Hubert Szczęśniak
Subject(s): History, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Music, General Reference Works, Recent History (1900 till today), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Source Material
Published by: Koło Naukowe Studentów Muzykologii UJ
Keywords: KL Auschwitz-Birkenau; musical sources; Holocaust Music; Music and Politics; Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum;

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the conclusion of the research conducted by the author in the collection of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp. The sources are fully featured and described for the first time. The article focuses on showing a complicated post-war history of the camp items connected with music (musical instruments, printings, manuscripts, handwritten copies of instrumental books), which are auxiliary sources to reconstruct the repertoire of chapels in KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. The main aim of the article is to also discuss the preserved repertoire. In the last chapter, the author presents a short characteristics of original works composed by musicians and composers in slavery with a short analysis of all of them. Presented musical printings are a reflection of tastes of the German public in the 1930s as well as an example of ridiculous anthropological establishments of Nazi music scientists and no ability to implement it on listeners practice. In addition, the work contains annexes: musical instruments, original works composed during camp existence, and musical printings – a list of music materials which survived in the collection of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

  • Issue Year: 2017
  • Issue No: 01 (32)
  • Page Range: 125-173
  • Page Count: 49
  • Language: English