In:
Revue musicale OICRM, Consortium Erudit, Vol. 3, No. 2 ( 2019-06-06), p. 1-21
Abstract:
The research project that inspired this dossier explores the process of musical memory and resistance through song and humour, by examining a very unusual work. Le Verfügbar aux Enfers is an “operetta-revue” written by a group of prisoners led by the French ethnologist, Germaine Tillion, in 1944 at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. This “work” (whose sources have heretofore been largely overlooked) is a multiform collage with spoken dialogue, recited passages, and songs “to the tune of…” that recall and distort well-known melodies and tunes of the period; it thus depicts life at the camp from a humorous and derisive perspective to help the deportees withstand and survive the horror. Using this unique work as a starting point, we seek to recreate the musical memory mobilized by the deportees at Ravensbrück through interdisciplinary research that combines the study of memory, the historiography of concentration camps, and musical and literary analysis. Particular attention is paid to interrogating the influence of the new forms of media of the era—radio, recordings, and cinema, which have provided the majority of the musical sources for the operetta-revue—on the practice and processes of memory and composition.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2368-7061
Language:
French
Publisher:
Consortium Erudit
Publication Date:
2019
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