An Interview with Nancy Rubenstein Messham: Director of the Music Reborn Project

By Megan Seigh

Nancy Rubenstein Messham has been a musician and teacher for years.  She will currently be directing a special concert titled, “Music Reborn: Forbidden and Forgotten” during the 2009 Ethel LeFrak Holocaust Education Conference at Seton Hill University (SHU).

“The purpose of Music Reborn is to help preserve the legacy of a generation of lost European composers whose lives or livelihoods were destroyed; composers who were banned, persecuted, murdered or exiled.  Through research and public performances, audiences are able to come to know at least a few of those many composers by hearing their works and learning something about their lives,” said Messham.

 Messham started this project with such dedication and it continues as she explains,

“I became inspired to research and collect the music of the composers in 2003 when I was the music director of a Holocaust education project. Most of us cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like to have experience the horrors of the Holocaust.”

Messham continues, “Being a musician and teacher, I couldn’t help to wonder what happened to the gifted European musicians during those terrible years.  Many were musicians who were conservatory-trained and internationally acclaimed, at a time of a great cultural boom.  In my own small way, I am hoping to bring light to those whose careers and lives were extinguished.” 

Many of those musicians had careers as teachers, performers, conductors, composers, and writers before the reign of the Third Reich.  When Hitler came to power, most of these musicians became part of what he considered a ‘degenerate’ culture and everything they had ended.

“Collecting music of composers who were suppressed by the Nazi regime has been a challenging and rewarding experience.  Much of the music written during this time was destroyed,” said Messham.

“What remained was either found with relatives who survived the war, or discovered hidden away in attics, buried, or in the cracks of walls, often in fragments. Some of the music which was sung in camps and ghettos has come to us through the voices of the survivors,” said Messham.

Even music that was published prior to the mid-1930s became obscure and went out of print. When the Nazis came to power, they banned not only Jewish composers and musicians, but those with Jewish relatives or friends, those of different racial backgrounds, those who wrote in an avant-garde or jazz style, or those whose political beliefs did not coincide with their own. 

Composers who were banned were widespread from Poland, and Germany, to Austria and other countries.  The amount of composers whose lives and works were lost makes it difficult to find the surviving scores.

Messham talks about her experience with this music project.  “Thanks to the magic of the internet, I have been able to locate much of it in rare and used bookstores as far away as Australia.  With the help of Professor Bloch of the Terezin Memorial Music Project, I have also been able to get scores from museum archives which were never published.”

“When I am able to see and hear such a rare piece of music, I feel as if I have found a rare jewel, and I am excited and pleased to be able to give it ‘new life’.  The saddest part is thinking about all the music which never came to be,” stated Messham.

This music and the history behind it are sure to inspire those who are listening.

“I would like for people to more fully understand the plight of not only musicians, but of all peoples during those terrible years; and to appreciate the freedoms that we have, and how quickly they could be taken away,” said Messham.

Messham continues, “I would also hope that they would be inspired by the fact that, despite the very worst of circumstances, people continued to create beautiful things, and continued to hope. In fact, music was a means of survival during those times.  Listening to the music reminds us of the triumph of the human spirit, and the fact that the Nazis did not succeed in their attempts to thwart artistic freedom and creativity.”