“From natural disasters to war, classical composers have long responded to traumatic events with their music, especially in the 20th century,” writes Ian Pace in Friday’s Conversation (U.K.). “The Danish composer Carl Nielsen composed Paraphrase on Nearer My God to Thee (1912) following the sinking of the Titanic…. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 (1957) depicts vividly the massacre of protestors during the failed 1905 Russian revolution. But the attacks of September 11 in New York have probably generated the largest number of such works, which are undoubtedly varied in nature. A whole body of classical music has emerged that attempts in various ways to respond to the tragedy. Musical responses to such events might seem worthy and reasonable endeavors. Some demonstrate the composers’ engagement with a wider world. Others give a musical voice to collective trauma and suffering or serve as a moving memorial to the victims of the tragedy. However … 9/11 has the potential to artificially lend a sense of importance to music whose wider merits become hitched to this horrible event, placing it beyond criticism…. I would not wish to argue that composers, or other artists, should refrain from engaging with such events … Debussy, Shostakovich, Adams and others succeed in creating music that embodies both a very personal response and an individual perspective.”
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