Musical moment

Just wanted to share a small moment that stayed with me a long time, a tribute to something positive from the negative - in the spirit of Spread the Love Week from Melissa @ Oh, My Darling...

Some years ago, while gigging at a radio station and searching for something to play on-air, I spotted an album of songs for voice and piano...then realized they were composed in a WWII concentration camp & the composer did not survive the war.

I almost put the record back -- it seemed too heart-rending -- but decided to go ahead & give it airplay, telling the backstory too. As the music played, an older woman called in.

She remembered the day the music premiered in the camp, long ago. She was just a teen, another prisoner of the Nazis. She thanked me, crying a bit.

As you can imagine...

I could barely hold it together when I had to go back live on-air...

It seemed incredible that out of horror, poignant moments could linger a half-century later...the sound of a piano, an older woman reaching a younger one, music born in war now played in peace...

If nothing else, my young, naive self began glimpsing something in how the smallest action can affect someone more than you know, and even resonate back with compassion...

"Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."
--Edwin Hubbel Chapin (anti-war, anti-slavery, pro-women's rights activist, 1814-1880)

~ Wishing you a day that resonates with positive moments and compassion. ~

(The composer was Viktor Ullmann; the music was Die Weise der Liebe und des Todes (The Manner of Love and Death), 12 pieces for voice and piano or orchestra (from Rilke)--composed and premiered in Terezin, 1944. Images via Wikipedia Commons, Mylla and My Opera.)