The aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 has produced a plethora of music, which runs the gamut from dissonance to consolation, according to Dr. Ronit Seter.
Seter spoke last month at a five-day conference at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, hosted by the World Congress of Jewish Studies, which offered fascinating discussions that tied the worlds of academia, art, music, and our present situation.
An Israeli native now residing in the US, Seter’s talk and research explores how 12 different Israeli composers have reacted to the war and the events of October 7.
“They all have their own individual styles, so there is nothing monolithic about these compositions,” said Seter, adding that the compositions can be roughly categorized into two larger groups.
Musical works express horror and comfort
Works such as Ruben Seroussi’s “A Microphonic Pamphlet Against Violence,” Ziv Cojocaru’s “Run into the Circle, Run out!,” or Michael Seltenreich’s “The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” aim at musically expressing the horrors of war with dramatic dissonant compositions.
Surprisingly, despite the modern nature of these works, they have been well-received by wider audiences, effectively communicating the raw emotions of the event.
On the other hand, Seter explains that other compositions offer more consoling content, which stands in stark contrast to their usual modernist vein, thereby testifying to a desire for wider communication. These works include Josef Bardanashvili’s “Red South,” Oded Zehavi’s “Seter Hamedrega,” and Bracha Bdil’s “Fanfare for Hope.”
Seter highlighted two compositions for voice and orchestra, noting two in particular. One is Haim Permont’s four-movement work “Red South,” which is constructed on four different poems with texts that directly or indirectly refer to the October 7 events.
The other is Bardanashvili’s “Endless Silence,” which Seter calls one of his more accessible orchestral works. It was commissioned by KAN 11 and performed with well-known artists such as Efrat Gosh and Eliav Zohar.
For Bardanashvili, the event was a near-personal catastrophe: his daughter was an IDF soldier whose position put her near the border that night. In “Endless Silence,” Bardanashvili relies on texts by those who were murdered at the Supernova music festival, perhaps as a form of catharsis.
There are also the purely orchestral compositions, such as Seltenreich’s “The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” which Seter finds particularly impressive. Commissioned by Lahav Shani and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, it portrays the horrors of war with shrieking, dissonant textures, and a middle movement that uses brass instruments to imitate the wailing sirens of war.
Other composers, such as Seroussi in his “A Microphonic Pamphlet Against Violence,” relate to the October 7 events in more abstract, theoretical terms. It is constructed on the overtones of seven and 10.
Aviya Kopelman’s “Bring Them Home Now,” commissioned by the Israel Chamber Orchestra, is a deeply moving lament that draws on minimalism, similar to Henryk Górecki’s “Sorrowful Songs.”
Bracha Bdil’s more militaristic vein is apparent in her “Fanfare for Hope.” Commissioned by Lahav Shani and the Israeli Philharmonic, it was written in the wake of the October 7 events and seamlessly weaves popular Israeli folk music with Mahlerian and Ben Haim’s post-romantic and expressionist pathos to create a rhythmic and versatile composition.
In “The Danger of Music,” historian Richard Taruskin opposes the notion that “composers owe their greatest debt not to the society in which they live, but to the history of their art – and historians are there to rarify and enforce it.”
The abundance of Israeli compositions that relate to the October 7 events reinforces Taruskin’s argument and the relationship between art and society. These composers’ works are an expression of their personal connection to the society they live in, even if their pleas go unheard by the powers that be.