The sounds of remembrance
Musical interpretations of Babi Yar
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In art, Babi Yar was portrayed as the site of one of the largest massacres of the Second World War and as a place of remembrance even before a monument was erected there. Dmitry Shostakovich’s first movement of his 13th Symphony, which is based on the famous poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, towers above all other commemorative musical works. These range from Lullaby for Babi Yar by Nechama Livšic to various Soviet singer-songwriter works, to Dmytro Klebanov’s Memorial Symphony for the Victims and Yevhen Stankovych’s opulent “Babi Yar” Requiem-Kaddish. As long as the Soviet Union refused to acknowledge the Jewish identity of most of the victims, anyone who expressed the events at Babi Yar through art risked becoming the victim of cultural and personal repression.
(Osteuropa 1-2/2021, pp. 141–174)