Curator: Jan Turkenburg
Subject: Song of Survival - Music for a Women's Vocal Orchestra
echo 19 radio broadcast on 2ser, Sidney
review on audio rummage
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Curator: Jan Turkenburg Subject: Song of Survival - Music for a Women's Vocal Orchestra echo 19 radio broadcast on 2ser, Sidney review on audio rummage « vorige week volgende week » |
 | nederlandse tekst In 1943 Margaret Dryburgh, a Presbyterian missionary, half-starved, being isolated in an overcrowded prison camp for over a year, among the bedbugs, the rats, and the smell of latrines, reconstructed entire works of composers such as Beethoven, Debussy and Chopin from memory without the aid of any musical instrument. Norah Chambers, a graduate of London's Royal Academy of music, helped arrange the orchestral and piano pieces for four-part choral singing. Mainly Dutch, British and Australian members of a new thirty-voice choir drew staves and copied scores with precious pencil stubs on carefully hoarded paper scraps. About half of them wouldn't survive the war. |
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Quotes: liner notes from Patricia J. Hennings 1. Largo from "New world Symphony" - Antonin Dvorák "These haunting melodies subtly convey the force of hope and desire for freedom. As the melody is carried by the different voice parts, this musical symbolism is felt by the chorus. Norah Chambers told her wartime vocal orchestra that the final progression of chords must be sung with a sound of triumph." 2. Jesu, Joy of man's Desiring - J.S. Bach (arr. by Myra Hess) "was a favorite of the well-known British pianist Myra Hess who often used it as an encore" 3. Minuet in G - Ludwig van Beethoven 4. Prelude no. 15, The "Raindrop" - Frédéric Chopin* " This repeated eigth-note pattern pervades the piece just as contstantly as the monsoon rain poured through the palm-frond roofs of the prison camp-endlessly, incessantly" 5. Humoresque - Antonin Dvorák* "had been popularized by violinist Fritz Kreisler" | 
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6. Andante Cantabile - Peter Illich Tchaikovsky "In it's opening phrases the weight and breadth of strings can be heard. When performing this piece, the singers actually feel like instruments." 7. Morning from "Peer Gynt Suite" - Edvard Grieg "a serene opening yields to cascading sixteenth-note passages that were truly meant for strings: a vocal challenge" 8. Ręverie - Claude Debussy 9. Menuet ŕ l'Antique - Ignacy Jan Paderewski* "Made popular by Paderewski himself" 10. The Captive's Hymn (1942) - Margaret Dryburgh "Sung everysunday in the camp" |
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historical notes 2 historical notes 3 more recordings of "song of survival" Helen Colijn's book Paradise road (movie about this story by Bruce Beresford) 
| "This evening we are asking you to listen to something quite new, we are sure-a choir of women's voices trying to reproduce some of the well-known music usually given by an orchestra or a pianist. The idea of making ourselves into a Vocal Orchestra came to us when songs were difficult to find and remember, and we longed to hear again some of the wonderful melodies and harmonies that uplifted our souls in days gone by. So we make our humble attempt to let you hear some of the masterpieces of the musical world as well as we can remember them." These poignant words were spoken by Margaret Dryburgh, a prison camp internee for three and a half years on South Sumatra during World War II, as she introduced her unique musical arrangements to her fellow captives on December 27, 1943. Her remarkable memory for music enabled her to write down with amazing accuracy a collection of thirty "master-pieces of the musical world." With Norah Chambers, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London, she arranged these works for four-part choral singing. Thirty of the women in the camp formed a "Vocal Orchestra," conducted by Norah Chambers, which presented periodic concerts for the other prisoners. At the war's end, the survivors scattered across the world. Years later, Antoinette Colijn Mayer, now living in Washington, D .C., and one of the surviving singers from the original vocal orchestra, discovered that her treasured hand-copied manuscript of the vocal orchestra music was deteriorating. She contacted her sister, Helen Colijn, who helped to arrange for the donation of the manuscript to the Music Library of Stanford University in California. When the Library's Archive of Recorded Sound wanted a recording of the music, the Peninsula Women's Chorus under the direction of Dr. Patricia Hennings agreed to perform selections from the manuscript. 
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 Helen Colijn and Patricia Hennings with the original manuscript | During the rehearsals for the first commemorative concert, the chorus became intimate with both the music and its story. Respect for the accomplishments of their wartime counterparts grew. Chorus members and the local audiences who attended the concerts in March 1982 agreed that both the music and the story deserved to be shared with a wider audience. Accordingly, plans were made for a documentary film, "Song of Survival," that would focus on a reunion concert to be given in May 1983, to which the surviving original singers would be invited from their homes in England, Australia, Indonesia, and The Netherlands. The chorus was eager to meet these women, and to hear about their experiences and reactions first hand. After forty years, what memories would be aroused? Would they be too powerfull? Would the survivors weep? And if they did, would we? When the long-awaited day of the reunion concert arrived, the response of the survivors was one of joy that after forty years this music that had meant so much to them was being sung again. Their mood gave the concert a feeling of triumph; it became a celebration of the courage of all those remarkable women, truly a song of survival. The bond between the two "orchestras" was sealed as they stood together on May 7, 1983, and sang "The Captive's Hymn." Through the re-creation of this music, the chorus shared personally in the wartime experience, becoming closer to it than would be possible through the printed page. This recording commemorates an endeavor which, while probably unique in World War II prison camps, is an experience that transcends historical boundaries and could have happened among prisoners of any camp during any war. It's a tribute to Margaret Dryburgh who wrote do |
