Musical Testimonies of Terezín and the Possibilities of Contrapuntal Listening
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21836073 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amy Lynn Wlodarski (Dickinson College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2022-08-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Music and Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1938-7687 • E-ISSN: 1938-7687 |
| Publisher | University of Michigan Library (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.3998/mp.3108 |
| OpenAlex | W4292359764 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 16 |
Taking my cue from the postcolonial cultural analyses of Edward Said, as well as a recent postcolonial turn in Holocaust studies, I define a practice of contrapuntal listening for the copious musical witness that constitutes the extensive Holocaust testimonial archive. Contrapuntal listening recognizes the inherent power dynamics and potential narrative desires present within the capture of testimony, a process that is never ideologically blank and is often driven by the explicit goals of the interviewers (amateurs and experts alike), whose relationship to the traumatized individual before them ranges from the empathetic to the antagonistic. This essay attempts to listen contrapuntally to one documentary source concerned with Viktor Ullmann’s musical activities in Terezín: Goethe och Ghetto (1996), the award-winning film directed by Peter Berggren and Göran Rosenberg. My analysis places the original witness testimonies collected for the project in contrapuntal conversation with the final documentary to illuminate its intentional “voicing” of three survivors as well as the power dynamics inherent in the testimonial exchange. My aim is not to cast aspersions, but to call for increased attention to these varied counterpoints as we expand our understanding of music’s roles in multivocal spaces like Terezín. To do so is to begin to enable a self-critical exchange with musical testimonies that considers their engagement within historical networks of power and authority
Active listening · Aesthetics · Art · Dialogic · Ideology · Linguistics · Literature · Musical · Narrative · Sociology · Testimonial · Visual arts · Witness · Diverse Musicological Studies · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy
As the Holocaust escalated, the Swedish press fell silent
Viktor Ullmanns Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Tod‐Verweigerung (1944) als Form utopischen Widerstands
The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism
Paul Celan
Introduction
Music in the Holocaust
From Africa to Auschwitz
Germany's Genocide of the Herero
Transformed beyond recognition? The politics of post-neutrality
Admitting the Holocaust
Culture and Imperialism
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |