Music from Auschwitz

Beginning in 2016, Patricia Hall, SMTD professor of music theory, made yearly visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to search for musical manuscripts. She found a number of pieces that had been copied by hand and arranged by Polish political prisoners in the Auschwitz I men’s orchestra. In a collaborative effort with several SMTD students and faculty, as well as Oriol Sans – former faculty member of SMTD and current director of orchestral activities and assistant professor in conducting at the University of Wisconsin Mead Witter School of Music – Hall has prepared these works to be presented in a series of concerts.

On May 7, 2024, an ensemble of undergraduate and graduate students will perform a “launch” concert of the pieces in Britton Recital Hall for their European tour. Further concerts will take place at the Jewish Museum, Vienna (May 13), and at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow (May 16). The performance includes instrumental arrangements as well as songs, with vocals performed by a quartet of singers from the SMTD Department of Voice. The singers will also recite lines from postwar testimonies of the copyists and arrangers, offering an important personal complement to the music being performed.

Explore a video playlist from the “Music from Auschwitz” project: