Falmouth Jewish Congregation Hosts a Free, VIRTUAL* Jewish Book Council Author Talk by Jeremy Eichler on Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust and the Music of Remembrance
Tuesday, November 28 at 7pm on Zoom (this event has been changed from in-person to virtual)
Book Sales by Eight Cousins Bookshop
Advance reservations are required. Click here to register for Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kceCgrDkiGdJPllARsxvHccd0SVYizFpm
Join Boston Globe classical music critic and author Jeremy Eichler for a Jewish Book Council Talk on Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust and the Music of Remembrance. This event is free and open to the public, but requires advance registration.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2023
Sunday Times HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR
TLS MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR
“[A] masterful debut . . . Vivid, luminous prose . . . [Time’s Echo is] a moving declaration of the power of music to transmit human feeling across time.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Time’s Echo is a remarkable book. Jeremy Eichler shows how listening to history through its music can transport us in mind, body, and spirit — resulting in a profound, detailed resurrection of the past into the living present. The composers at the book’s heart come across not as distant historical figures but as fully human characters with whom we can identify. The result is a kind of time travel with music as our mode of transport, a poignant journey back to an era that still affects us, and an inspiringly hopeful meditation on the power of art to remember not just the traumas of the past but also its highest ideals.”—Yo-Yo Ma
"[Jeremy Eichler] connects the fluidity of musical time to personal and historical memory. Despite detailed endnotes, Time's Echo is not a reference book. Carefully researched and capacious in scope, it reads as elegy: mournful, elegant and gratifying... Toward the end, Eichler quotes a letter from Shostakovich to Britten... [which] provides a wonderful summary for Time's Echo: 'Your music is the most outstanding phenomenon of the twentieth century. And for me it is the source of profound and powerful impressions. Write as much as possible. It is necessary for humanity — and certainly for me.'"—Martha Anne Toll, The Washington Post
A stirring account of how the flowering of the European Enlightenment, two world wars, and the Holocaust can be remembered through the poignant works of music created in their wake. When it comes to how societies remember these increasingly distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of history books, archives, documentaries, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time’s Echo, award-winning critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler makes a passionate and revelatory case for the power of music as culture’s memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past. Eichler shows how four towering composers — Benjamin Britten, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, Richard Strauss — lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving, transcendent works of music, scores that carry forward the echoes of lost time. Summoning the testimony of writers, poets, philosophers, novelists, musicians, and everyday citizens, Time’s Echo proposes a new way of listening to history and learning to hear in its music the hopes, dreams, and suffering of earlier generations. A lyrical narrative full of insight and compassion, this book deepens how we think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the possibilities of art in our lives today.
An award-winning critic and cultural historian, Jeremy Eichler has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker and the Boston Globe, where he serves as chief classical music critic. His work has been recognized with grant awards from Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit Jeremy Eichler's website for news, resources (including audio selections) and background. https://jeremy-eichler.com/