Though the author’s scope ranges from the early 19th century to the present day, it is not a comprehensive history, rather it is a sort of micro history of a musical genre born of sadness, hate, anger, and political dominance. It is a genre I have chosen to call “classical protest music”. And, for the sake of this review, I am referring to the incorporation of protest as a valid and effective modality for the contemporary composer.of so called “western art music”, Until the very late 19th century, music served mostly entertainment, celebration, worship, and memorial functions. But this is about a new, if frequently discomforting voice for this art form.

Music, like drama, and sometimes poetry are art forms that burn most brightly in performance. They exist on a page or even simply within the artist’s mind but come fully alive only in the temporal realm of performance. They then come to exist in the memories of the individuals who experience it. And those memories also exist concurrently within the overall social reality. Politics, philosophy, economics, and spirituality which ultimately frame art are now incorporated into the art form as it talks back to history.

The function of protest music in the popular or vernacular genre, one that arguably has had a greater impact in fomenting political change than protest music in the guise of the western classical tradition, has been well documented. Not so with music of the concert hall classical format.

Jeremy Eichler’s beautifully researched and written micro history makes a case for this art form framing (or reframing) history. Of course, not all expressions of protest hit the target of actually influencing history, but this book is not about that. It is about the birth of a concept little known in music until the late 19th and early 20th century. It is a genre which persists today in the so called political classical genre.

The book is filled with historical facts and people which become metaphors as the author elucidates the historical contexts that, in retrospect, can be seen as the genesis of art not just passively responding to historical events. They are attempts to use art to comment about and, hopefully influence history and to express outrage, sadness, and to call for change.

Music, ever the realm of entertainment and celebration, now increasingly finds purpose and mechanism to participate, not only as a supplier of entertainment and homage, but also as “a voice crying in the wilderness” in dialogue with the social/political milieu.

Eichler chooses four musical pieces by four different composers from four different time periods to tell the story of the evolution of western art music to speak with in an informed, publicly intellectual voice. In its ideal presentation, it succeeds best when it resonates with the hearts and minds of the audience. That can and sometimes does “go viral” (in common parlance) and subsequently influences public opinion.

The musical exemplars the author chooses includes:

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) “Metamorphosen” (1946)

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) “A Survivor from Warsaw” (1947)

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) “War Requiem”(1962)

Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) “Symphony No. 13 ‘Babi Yar’” (1962)

Each composer, each work is subjected to historical, philosophical, and (I would say) spiritual/mystical analysis. And, to accomplish this, he goes back first to the early 19th century to discuss the rise of the idealized German gconcept of “Bildung” and the subsequent rise of antisemitism famously touted as a necessary fact by Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and subsequently amplified to the extreme of The Shoah.

Many musical works are referenced here, but John Foulds “A World Requiem” (1923), which is a large grandiose work of post romantic grandeur that seems to embody many of the elements that have come to characterize classical protest music. The work, written for large forces incorporates both liturgical and non-liturgical texts from disparate sources (not just western literature). It was conceived seemingly as a sort of final statement, a “requiem to end all requiems”, so to speak. Though popular in its day, it no more succeeded in preventing violence and hatred than Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) in his unfinished Mysterium” succeeded in making the composer an immortal in a transcendent realm described from the spiritual imagination of Theosophical writings. But it did make a huge impact on protest as a valid modality for the artist. Protest in any modality doesn’t always have the intended impact. The point is the statement itself.

Foulds’ work can be seen as a sort of precursor, if not template for Britten’s “War Requiem”. More importantly the success of Foulds’work revealed a sympathetic audience who doubtless saw in it a clarion call, a grandly hopeful expression to an audience hungry to resolve the hatred, anger, and sadness of the increasingly divided and chaotic world as it evolved post 1919. It spoke to a fervent hope for healing and transcendence and remains a historically significant work of musical art.

Doubtless, many composers were delighted to identify this burgeoning need. Countless works followed Foulds’ noble effort and continue to this day in larger and smaller forces. Protest music, visual art, poetry, and drama are born of pain, sorrow, and hope derived from a sometimes pleading, sometimes shouting optimism. Much like audience engagement in sing alongs, audiences are invited to participate politically, emotionally and share the pain, sadness, and outrage as art speaks back to society rather than simply decorating it or celebrating it. Now, art embraces critique, not simply memorial.

Eichler discusses each composer and work, contextualizing them historically, geographically, emotionally, and philosophically/spiritually.

He begins then, with Richard Strauss (1864-1949) and the only work cited here that does not have a vocal component or a text. It is also more a personal reaction rather than an a work explicitly engaging with politics and history. It remains the most unique and enigmatic piece in the oeuvre of a man who remained, if not always happily, employed from the late nineteenth century, through two world wars and horrific historical events and wildly differing leaders. To this listener’s ears, it seems more of a catharsis, a musical processing of the composer’s emotions and possibly exorcizing them and containing them in this music. It is truly a powerful piece but it does not rise to the more explicit protest works that would follow in the mid twentieth century.

A very convincing and insightful analysis is made of the next exemplar of the genre. Eichler’s biographical, historical, and philosophical/spiritual contextualizing of “A Survivor from Warsaw” (1947) seems an unusual choice. But, the fact that this brief monodrama is probably the first major public utterance of the rising awareness of the atrocities described by the narrator and focused attention in a way that only art can. It was also the development of the composer’s revolutionary serially organized music which was, perhaps ironically, very well suited to express the horrors of this age of “great wars”.

This section of the book is a masterful integration of political, historical, spiritual elements that provide a compelling mini history, linking individuals and events that shed a fascinating (and devastating) light on this era in musical history. It also places the composer most definitely as a protester, a would be agent of progressive political change. It led this listener to seek to experience more of Schoenberg’s music and was gratified to hear it forever differently and, more so than ever, more essential within western art music.

The work was a resounding success at its world premiere in, of all places, New Mexico. The Albuquerque Civic Symphony conducted by Kurt Frederick. 1600 people crowded into the Carlisle Gymnasium on November 4, 1948 were so pleased that the work was repeated, in full, to a deeply moved audience.

Hearing this music now, available in many fine interpretations on CD and in video formats, it is all the more stunning that this hardly easy listening tale about horrific events played so well and hit so deeply. And I will never again think of this as one of the composer’s lesser works.

Moving on to Benjamin Britten and his 1962 “War Requiem”. This music has a prominent place for this writer, having heard a performance by the Chicago Symphony conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. The cellist, turned conductor was a lifelong progressive political advocate who facilitated a meeting which would become a friendship between Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich among his accomplishments.

But, I digress. Eichler’s framing of this composer and music shows a true pacifist composer who encountered the horrors of the First World War as well as subsequent atrocities perhaps one step removed geographically and culturally from the experience of Strauss and Schoenberg. He was a student, then a composer/pianist much admired and supported by the British as he steadily earned his place on the world stage.

Early in his rising successes, he managed to insinuate himself to play piano in a series of concerts with Yehudi Menuhin, that toured through war torn Europe to great acclaim. And it is here that the composer encountered first hand, the sights, the stories, the emotions that would forever inform and transform him and his music.

This experience is likely one of the seeds that led to the 1962 requiem. Britten utilized the form and Latin texts of the “Missa Pro Defunctis” , the Roman Catholic funeral rites. And he adds a chamber group that plays onstage in front of the full orchestra and chorus (I recall seeing a children’s chorus singing from the topmost seats in Orchestra Hall). The chamber group supports a tenor and a baritone who sing Britten’s settings from the late soldier, then poet/activist Wilfred Owen’s vividly sad and angry poetry. This is a guise not unlike what Leonard Bernstein would do in his anti war “Mass” some 12 years later.

Notably, the premiere was to have included tenor Peter Pears (Britten’s life and musical partner), baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (later the wife of Mstislav Rostropovich). However the Soviet government prevented her from performing this politically hot work. The hope of symbolically including British, German, and Russian artists was to further emphasize the message of the work. Though Vishnevskaya did participate in the glorious 1963 DECCA recording, she was replaced (most successfully) by the fine British soprano Heather Harper for the premiere. Britten himself conducted the chamber group at the premiere with Meredith Davies leading the large orchestra, choir and soloists.

In discussing the War Requiem, Eichler recounts his pilgrimage to the site of the newly rebuilt Coventry Cathedral which had been very badly damaged in the war and the work was commissioned to celebrate the consecration of the new edifice which was built next to the 14th century ruins, ruins through which the audience passed following the very successful premiere on July 27th, 1962. Eichler reports that his own experience walking through the ruins was a powerful experience even now, but especially when one knows this history.

For the book’s finale, Eichler chose a too little known Shostakovich Symphony, his 13th (1962) ( later titled “Babi Yar”). The composer had worked under the repression of the Soviet Empire at least since his opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” disturbed the Soviet leadership in the 1930s. But he managed to get in a few significant political punches during his long career and continued to produce substantial and fresh new music until his death in 1975.

His 5th Symphony won him favor again with the Soviets and the composer’s 7th Symphony “Leningrad”, a paean to the ultimate victory over Nazi forces in 1944 is the stuff of legend, being performed on March 29th of 1942, literally during the siege of Leningrad. Musician soldiers were relieved of their war duties in order to have enough musicians to perform it and strategic bombing raids were done to redirect Nazi bombings and ensure that the music would be heard at its embattled premiere.

Eichler’s choice of the 13th Symphony is an apt choice to fit the author’s thesis. The work is a cri de couer, an angry lament raising the awareness of a genocidal slaughter, the evidence of which survived multiple efforts to erase the facts and the evidence from history. It sets the words of the fine Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932-2017) in his poem “Babi Yar” that provided the words. It refers, of course to the genocidal mass murders of Jews, dissidents, and others deemed not worthy of being allowed to live in the Nazi regime at the ravine so named. Accounts vary and much had been done to cover up the murders which numbered up to 30, 000 a day. In fact, there did not exist a memorial for some 100, 000 killed at Babi Yar until 1992.

The 13th Symphony premiered on December 18, 1962 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Kiril Kondrashin conducted. Despite controversy and attempts to tamper with the words, pressure to stop the premiere, it was a rousing success. This was only some seven months after the premiere of the Britten War Requiem.

Eichler’s account could have ended here but for the fact that, in addition to facilitating a meeting between Britten and Shostakovich, Mistislav Rostropovich smuggled a copy of the 1963 DECCA recording of the War Requiem and a score so that Shostakovich could hear it. And listen he did, with enthusiasm such that Shostakovich was inspired to respond in what would become the composer’s 14th Symphony which was dedicated to Britten. Hence the arts had a conversation about the atrocities of war like never before.

The work, incorporating poems by various poets on the subject of death was premiered officially on September 29th, 1969 in Leningrad by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra conducted by Rudolph Barshai. It appears to be inspired in part by the composer’s 1962 orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s song cycle, “Songs and Dances of Death” (ca. 1875) and perhaps Gustav Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder” (1904).

The response at the premiere, hardly devoid of criticism, was another resounding success for the aging, ailing composer. The UK premiere was conducted at Aldeburgh by its dedicatee, Benjamin Britten, also to great acclaim.

Eichler’s book elegantly describes the genesis of these five works inspired by the history of very real and very shameful atrocities of some 50 years of conflicts which, though they may never be resolved, are truly “Time’s Echo” encased in artistic amber as it were. The memory of this reviewer’s experience of witnessing Maestro Rostrpovich’s reading of Britten’s Requiem so many years later and indeed all subsequent performances of the music chosen here by Eichler hold out a glimmer of hope that these echoes of their time will preserve both the memories of the atrocities themselves as well as the just outrage of the artist’s products in sound for posterity.