Monday 15 April 2019, this date is forever etched in our memory. I couldn't keep dry at the images of the all-consuming fire at Notre-Dame de Paris. Like millions of others, I sat glued to my screen for hours with bated breath: this cannot be true! When the structure, the rose windows and even the organ turned out to be saved, tears again sprang to my eyes. A miracle had happened. The golden cross stood proudly upright in the smoking ruins - it would almost make you religious.
That the fire struck precisely in the week before Easter seems symbolic. Notre Dame as the personification of Christ, who manfully completes his agony but ultimately triumphs and rises from his grave. The performances of Bach's Matthew Passion can hardly be counted in this period. In addition, different versions of the Stabat Mater. In it, the focus is not Christ's suffering but the grief of his mother, Notre Dame.
Iconic church versus nameless victim
When a billion euros poured in for the restoration of the iconic cathedral in no time, there was an immediate sound of grumbling. Those generous billionaires donate their wealth only for their own glory. Couldn't we better use that money to save the climate? Why spend money on a pile of bricks while war refugees are cremating in miserable camps? Yes, the world is on fire.
Yet it is easier to identify with Notre Dame than with nameless victims of war and violence. These are given a voice in the orchestral work Musique pour l'esprit en deuil by Rudolf Escher. He composed it in 1943 and it will be Thursday 25 April performed by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra at TivoliVredenburg.
Escher and his wife Beatrijs were living on Rotterdam's Leuvehaven when World War II broke out. They had no telephone or radio. When, on 14 May 1940, they saw German seaplanes skimming over the Maas River, they moved curiously towards the Maas Bridge. They were surprised rather than frightened.
Scores burnt
As soon as they saw rubber boats and machine guns coming ashore, they returned home like hell. 'I grabbed a toothbrush and we cycled to Kralingen, where my parents lived,' Beatrijs Escher said about this. During the bombing, the family took shelter in the basement there. A bomb hit twenty metres away, after which they fled by car to Reeuwijk. When Rudolf Escher visited the house the next day, he found it completely destroyed. The grand piano and almost all the scores had also gone up in flames. Along with about 80,000 others, the family became homeless, with an estimated 650 to 900 people killed.
Escher refused to join the Kultuurkamer and even undertook courier services for the sabotage group of resistance fighter 'Witte Klaas'. Needless to say, this did not make life any easier. In 1942, he started Musique pour l'esprit en deuil (Music for the Mind in Mourning), which he completed a year later. In it, he aptly sketches the bleak and menacing atmosphere of those early war years.
Flamenco melody
The one-movement piece opens with sustained notes of two harps in the very lowest register, accompanied by menacing drum rolls. The string orchestra plays anxious tremoli, also in the low register. After this troubled introduction, some melodies from woodwinds and violins emerge in the upper register. However, these are smothered before they can fully unfold.
'The lyric must die,' Escher wrote in his own commentary. 'Unrest and menace replace expectation and lyricism.' As a sign of hope, after about four minutes a flamenco-like fact flares up in the trumpet. However, this too has to give way 'in the waxing tumult'. A marching thump leads to a dynamic climax, after which motifs from the low registers return.
At the end, the trumpeter again plays the flamenco melody and this time it can sound undisturbed to its end. Instead of concluding on a sombre note, it offers Musique pour l'esprit en deuil so comfort and reconciliation. Not surprisingly, the play is often performed around WWII death anniversaries.
Scores fired up
Incidentally, this score too would have been swallowed by the fire. Escher was distinctly self-critical and stoked up quite a few compositions in his coal stove. Musique pour l'esprit en deuil underwent four revisions, but was fortunately spared the flames. More than seven decades after its creation, the piece still offers comfort to a world in mourning.
During the bombing of Rotterdam, the Sint-Laurenskerk was badly damaged. It was restored in all its glory. May this also apply to the also medieval Notre-Dame.
The concert on 25 April is part of the AVROTROSVrijdagconcert and will be broadcast live on Radio 4. Besides Musique pour l'esprit en deuil, Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde is also on the programme. Info and tickets here.
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