Track of the Month: February

Happy birthday to Stephen Feigenbaum, composer of TMF commissions.

TMF commission composer Stephen Feigenbaum. Photo by RJDel.

STEPHEN FEIGENBAUM is an award-winning composer of music for the concert hall and theater. His Serenade for Strings was recorded by the Cincinnati Pops under Erich Kunzel and released on a CD by Telarc. He is winner of two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Albany Symphony Orchestra's Composer to Center Stage competition, which resulted in mentoring by John Corigliano. NPR's From the Top has featured Stephen as a composer, and he has appeared as an a cappella singer on The Martha Stewart Show and NBC's The Sing-Off. A native of Winchester, Massachusetts, Stephen majored in music at Yale College and received a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music. He has studied with Ezra Laderman, Michael Gandolfi, Samuel Adler, Kathryn Alexander, and Rodney Lister. Stephen's full bio, with numerous additional distinctions, is here.

More music from Terezin is here.

YOU ARE LISTENING to "Songs of Sorrow and Hope" for chorus and piano, a TMF Krasa-Schaechter commission by Stephen Feigenbaum. This piece premiered in 2009 at Prague's Lobkowitz Palace and had its American premiere at Boston's Symphony Hall that same year. It is a 2009 prize-winner in the Vancouver Chamber Choir’s Biennial Young Composer’s Competition.

In "Songs of Sorrow and Hope," I attempt to capture three aspects of humanity's reaction to genocide. The first is one of horror, and is expressed in a poem written by Hanus Hachenburg, who perished during the Holocaust.  He was a boy from Prague who was deported to Terezin
and died at age fourteen at Auschwitz. The second text is by Mary Kimani, a contemporary African writer who was a witness to the Rwandan genocide. Her poem, "Dance With Me," captures a sense of remorse in the aftermath of such tragedies. The final text is from a book by a relative of mine, Donna Rubinstein, called "I Am the Only Survivor of Krasnostav." I quote her words describing her disbelief at having survived the Holocaust, as well as her sense of obligation to tell the world about what happened.  As the piece nears its end, I repeat her words "I will tell what I remember."  Her wish to keep this history alive continues today through my composition and through the work of the Terezín Music Foundation. 
                                            ​​—Stephen Feigenbaum​

Sponsor a TMF commission: make a lasting contribution to contemporary music and help build a musical memorial to the Terezin artists.

"Songs of Sorrow and Hope" Texts:

​Excerpt from “Terezin” by Hans Hachenburg
 
There was a time – but three short years ago –
when I was still a child aspiring to
a different world. Today I am a child no longer
for I have seen the purple pall of mourning,
and, growing up, have been obliged to be
familiar with horror, with words of blood
and murdered days.
 
I try to tell myself, it’s all a dream!
and that, some day, I’ll wake to claim as mine
those childhood years sweet as eglantine.
 
By the candle’s light beside my bed, I sleep ...
Here, thirty thousand sleep their lives away,
who will, one day, wake in Stromovka Park;
when, opening their eyes, they’ll realize
they cannot bear to look.
 
“Dance with Me” by Mary Kimani

Dance with me.
Let’s dance a releasing dance.
A dance about the things we cannot say,
the pain we cannot heal,
the injuries we cannot undo.
Let’s dance about our folly,
our cruelty,
and the things we wish we could erase--
wish away--
but cannot.
Dance with me.
Let’s dance a dance of sorrow,
a dance of regret,
a dance of the pain we have put each other through.
Please dance with me.
 
Excerpt from I Am the Only Survivor of Krasnostav by Donna Rubinstein
 
As I light a memorial candle,
my hand trembles and my eyes fill with tears.
I think how amazing life is.
I was left alone in the world,
surrounded by enemies whom I had to outwit
to stay alive.
Was it purely luck that I was able to escape?
I am still alive,
a remnant of the Holocaust,
and I will not remain silent.
As long as I live,
I will tell what I remember,
so that at least one tiny part of this horror
shall never be forgotten.