Update Title: DA4CA8BF-0325-46A2-BE1B-0B49629E4008

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The theme of this music is the Holocaust and memory.  It is concerned with how the Holocaust haunts history+s collective memory; with humankind+s tortured memories of the cruel events that took place in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s; with the importance of never forgetting those who perished; with the painful memories that Holocaust survivors carry within themselves even today; with how the tortures of the victims affected their own memories; and with my personal memories of learning about the Holocaust from parents, relatives, friends, books, articles, movies, television, and radio.

The second movement came into existence first.  My publisher Marcia Goldberg asked me to compose a short piece for a performance by six members of the Saint Louis Symphony at a ceremony on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Ha Shoah), 16 April 1997.  While composing and then rehearsing it, I became obsessed with it and with the Holocaust.  I came to feel that this had to become one movement among many.  The complete four-movement piece now exists in versions for string quintet and piano and for string orchestra with piano.

As I composed, images and emotions drifted through my mind.  Some of them became associated with particular passages in the music.  Thus several verbal phrases appear in the score.  They are intended to suggest to the performers the appropriate expression.  They do not add up to a narrative, nor to a coherent story, and they are not of direct relevance to the listeners.  Instead of trying somehow to tell an audience which phrases apply to what music, I asked Roger Goodman to write brief poems that try to capture some of the moods expressed by the music.  The poems do not describe the music, nor does the music reflect the poetry.  But the two are related, and the poems serve as introductions to each of the four movements.  
--Jonathan D. Kramer

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