The project page for this work can be accessed here: Remembering Steel Skies Raining Tears

“A Mirror Full of Tears (held up to heaven)” is the second part of the larger multi-movement composition “Remembering Steel Skies Raining Tears” for string quartet. It can also be played very effectively as a stand-alone work. “Remembering Steel Skies Raining Tears” and “A Mirror Full of Tears (held up to heaven)” are based on interviews with child survivors of the Holocaust/Shoah. For more information and an overview of the project, go to the “Remembering Steel Skies Raining Tears” project page here.

“A Mirror Full of Tears (held up to heaven)” is a slow and spacious musical exploration of a deeper spiritual world suggested by the testimonies of child survivors and the writings of Viktor Frankl. For some, the terrible experiences of the Holocaust extinguished all possibilities of religious belief. For others, it kindled a more spiritual view of the world and a greater depth of meaning and purpose that enabled survival in difficult and extraordinary circumstances. 

“A Mirror Full of Tears (held up to heaven)” opens with a long expressive melody on the solo viola in the Freygish scale in F with its distinctive interval of the augmented second between the notes G flat and A. As the melody is extended, it becomes accompanied by a simple cello baseline and evocative trill motifs on the two violins.  As the work progresses, it features a dialogue between the first violin and cello. The high violin melodies suggest spiritual states that can be rendered in music beyond the capacity of spoken language. The cello melodies in the dialogue are based on the opening solos of “A Dream of Lost Words”. Here, the Klezmer-based Krekhts melodic ornamental figures are given a greater scope for musically embodying emotions of spiritual loss and sorrow. After a last intense cello solo cadenza passage, there is a long falling music section suggestive of flowing tears, followed by an earthy, expressive second violin solo. The work ends with a sense of a quiet, mysterious unknown. Viktor Frankl and the recent poetry of child survivor Lillian Boraks-Nemetz inspired the tone and character of this music.