music semiotics; Theresienstadt; Terezín; the Holocaust; concentration camps; Czech music; spiritual resistance; Pavel Haas; Gideon Klein; Viktor Ullmann

The traumatic context of the Holocaust poses significant challenges to hermeneutical study of the music composed in the concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt). In this context, the notoriously difficult problems of interpreting meaning in music are further complicated by pressing ethical and ideological concerns, since one is bound to take into account the atrocities of the Nazi regime and the unimaginable suffering experienced by its victims. Interpretation always entails not only reading meaning ‘out of’ the text at hand, but also ‘into’ it. The critical issue – particularly in problematic cases such as music from Terezín – is striking the appropriate balance between the two and being clear and honest about the interpretive strategies in use. In this chapter, I offer a critical review of discursive and hermeneutical strategies employed in the existing academic literature on the subject. I argue that much of the available scholarship is marked by lack of solid methodological grounding, simplistic attitudes towards the relationship between art and its biographical / historical context, uncritical reliance on pre-conceived ideas (such as that of ‘spiritual resistance’, criticised by Shirli Gilbert), and hidden agenda of ideological or even personal nature. Drawing examples from specific pieces by Pavel Haas composed in the camp, I demonstrate how these problems can be avoided by grounding one’s interpretation (without disregarding the context) in a rigorous scrutiny of the musical (and literary) text, using appropriate analytical, semiotic, and hermeneutic methods. I also stress the importance of considering each particular work’s affinity with styles, genres, topics, and techniques relevant to the author’s previous oeuvre, as well as to the broader intertextual universe of Western music, arts, and culture.