Music in the Ruins
This video is described as a man playing cello in the ruins of his home in Kyiv. I am wary of posting unvetted information for Ukraine because I don’t want to inadvertently pass along false propaganda. The person who tweeted this is Iuliia Mendel, who describes herself on Twitter as “ex Spokesperson to the President of Ukraine @ZelenskyyUa.” She credits the video to Denys Dudynskyy. I have no independent source of information about this except Mendel. So take it with a grain of salt.
If it isn’t mere propaganda, it is an example of art surviving in dire situations. It makes me think of French composer Olivier Messiaen, who was capture by the Nazis in 1940 and sent to Stalag 8A in Poland as a POW. While there, in awful conditions (the Germans treated their French prisoners poorly; there was no danger of retaliation as France had been conquered), Messiaen wrote Quatour pour la Fin du Temps, a piece of apocalyptic music for piano, cello, violin and clarinet (the instruments he had at his disposal). It was a howl in the face of overwhelming barbarity. It said, “Even here civilization endures.”
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