Desert Chorale performs songs of resistance, revolution
Music often scores the struggle for liberty.
From the concentration camps to the Civil Rights movement, choral singing has helped unify the oppressed and galvanize support for their causes.
The Santa Fe Desert Chorale will perform a program of this music in “Liberté: Music of Resistance and Revolution” at the Cathedral of St. John on Saturday.
The singers will open the concert with “Soir de Neige, (Night of Snow)” 1944, by Francis Poulenc.
With France under Nazi control, the poetry of Paul Éluard circulated among the Resistance. The Allies dropped copies of it from their planes. Poulenc set this text to music capturing the dark spirit of occupied Paris, a seed of defiance imbedded within the bleak symbolism.
“It’s one of those really tough, rarely performed pieces because it’s 12 parts, highly chromatic and very difficult,” chorale music director Joshua Habermann said. “It’s music as the idea of resistance or revolution.”
The era then shifts to the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union was losing its grip on its satellites. Singing has always been crucial to the cultures of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. A desire for self-determination persisted and by 1987 it coalesced around the singing of patriotic songs on the grounds of the Estonian National Song Festival. Demonstrations culminated in crowds of more than 300,000 singing. A declaration of independence followed.
“Choral singing is a big part of their culture,” Habermann said. “They also became rallying points for people rallying for independence from the Soviet Union.
“Amazingly, they won it,” he continued. “The Soviet troops pulled out with no bloodshed whatsoever. It was named the ‘singing revolution. ”
Choral singing also played a crucial role in the life of Jewish communities in the concentration camps of World War II. Many of the prisoners were highly trained musicians.
“It included chamber music and in many cases, choral music, because it was hard to get instruments,” Habermann said.
The hopeful “Anu Olim” spoke to the Jews’ desire for a safe haven amid the horrors of war.
“The melody was associated with people taken to the gas chamber,” Habermann said. “They knew where they were being taken, and they sang this melody as an affirmation of their faith.”