On April 27, 2017, after introductions by Professors Miranda Spieler and Brian Schiff, H茅lios Azoulay鈥攃omposer, clarinetist, writer, and music director of l鈥橢nsemble de Musique Incidental鈥攗sed storytelling and music to further illuminate the subject that he鈥檚 written and played about in L鈥檈nfer aussi a son orchestre [Hell Also Has its Orchestra] and鈥�m锚me 脿 Auschwitz [鈥ven in Auschwitz]: the haunting music composed by Nazi concentration camp prisoners during World War II. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e surprised when you learn that there was music in the concentration camps,鈥� Azoulay noted to his audience at the Maison de la Chimie, 鈥淵ou say, it鈥檚 impossible! Inconceivable! But think for another minute: music is everywhere. So why wouldn鈥檛 it have been in the camps?鈥�
When explaining the crucial role played by music, Azoulay quoted Primo Levy, who wrote that for the prisoners, 鈥渃鈥檈st la musique qui les pousse en avant comme le vent les feuilles s猫ches鈥� [it鈥檚 the music that pushes them forward, like wind does to dry leaves]. The Nazi soldiers in charge of the camps would use music to motivate and deceive: for example, in Treblinka, soldiers would play music and force prisoners to dress up as clowns in order to try to fool new arrivals into thinking that they had landed in a pleasant place. Azoulay refers to this environment as a 鈥渘egative world鈥�, one where imprisoned parents, 鈥渟ang lullabies, not to put their children to sleep, but to wake them up. Lullabies for the dead, les absents. Imaginary lullabies for imaginary children. We also, right now, we鈥檙e playing for les absents.鈥�
For the next two hours, Azoulay would walk his audience through pieces that tell their own tale of an unbearable time, an unthinkable place. He introduced the music of prisoners like Ilse Weber, a nurse in Terezin, who sang her lullaby, Wiegala, to children being led to the gas chamber; Robert Dauber, who died at 23 and wrote music that recalls the soundtracks of Golden Age, Hollywood films; Olivier Messiaen, whose Louange 脿 l鈥檌mmortalit茅 de J茅sus expresses a powerful ecstasy that still stuns; Josef Kropinski, who upon being liberated, had to leave 400 of his 700 scores behind, and then burned another 300 in order to stay warm on his long journey home. 鈥淓ach one is a miracle.鈥�
How can a lullaby, crooned by one woman and accompanied by a simple piano melody, echo through a space and yet feel as if it鈥檚 being sung just to you? At the end of this heartbreaking and entrancing evening, as we were urged to sing along with a playful rendition of a Kropinski air, Azoulay gave an explanation of sorts. 鈥淭his is the definition of music from the other side: calling you, impolite, not to be ignored. You must not just sing. You must scream. From within your song.鈥� This is perhaps the only way to bring back les absents, if just for a single night.