In an effort to share his passion for the historical musical performance of Verdi’s “Requiem,” Phillip Pfaltzgraff, WSC staff accompanist, presented his research “When Music Settles a Score” last Wednesday.
 
“My intrigue with this subject started on Easter Sunday afternoon,” Pfaltzgraff said. “I was watching a public television broadcast of a movie called ‘The Defiant Requiem.’”
 
He wasn’t even able to finish the entire film, but he was intrigued anyway—Pfaltzgraff began his research and furthered his interest in the topic.
 
Verdi’s “Requiem” gained historical value when it was performed by a group of Jewish inmates held in Camp Terezin during the Nazi attempt to remove the Jewish people from humanity. Camp Terezin was specifically reserved for Jews who were considered to be artists. Singers, composers, musicians, writers, scholars, actors, actresses and teachers were relocated to Camp Terezin after the German army invaded Poland.
 
Camp Terezin was supposed to be a “model camp.” It was constructed to be deceiving to those who were visiting or inspecting the concentration camps and was primarily built for propaganda.
 
The camp appeared to be “quaint and inviting” and gave the illusion that the relocation camps were “retirement communities.” This camp truly masked the devastation that happened inside its walls and mastered the tool of deception.
 
Inmates at Camp Terezin were allowed to bring their musical instruments or other things they used to create their art. One conductor brought along his musical score of “Verdi’s Requiem.” This particular conductor assembled the inmates and created the entire musically complicated performance—they sang the 85- to 90-minute ensemble with their captors sitting 30 feet away.
 
Throughout Pfaltzgraff’s presentation he showed various videos demonstrating the complexity of the piece and how much time and patience the prisoners had in order to pull the performance off.
 
One survivor from the videos stated, “We sang to the Nazis what we could not say to them.”
 
It is presumed that an entire generation of Czech artists was lost as a result of Camp Terezin.
 
Today, Verdi’s “Requiem” continues to make history. A well-known conductor and musician, Murry Sildin, created “The Defiant Requiem Project”—a video and performance project. The goal of this project is to make a hero out of the conductor who led the group of inmates to perform “Verdi’s Requiem” at Camp Terezin.
 
“Sometimes music supplies a voice that words just cannot achieve,” Pfaltzgraff said. “Hence my presentation’s name, ‘When Music Settles a Score.’”