Music of A Forgotten Master
Based on a true story, Music of A Forgotten Master is a dramatic short told through the music of a famous Jewish composer. It dramatically recreates the time when the music of David Nowakowsky was banned by the Nazis, and his original music sheets were hidden and almost lost forever.
1921: The War Against Music
Murder, suicide and political suppression. What was so dangerous about this music that it had to be stamped out? Why did its benefactor's son conceal his ancestry and later commit suicide?
David Nowakowsky (1848-1921) was a Jewish composer whose tombstone was destroyed and whose unpublished manuscripts had to be buried in occupied France while his surviving family escaped to Switzerland.
Mykola Leontovych (1877-1921) is mainly remebered for only one song: “Carol of the Bells” (Shedryk). He was murdered by the CHEKA (Soviet State Security, -also known as the “Terror” police) to eradicate Ukrainian culture and religion.
1921: The War Against Music is the story of two once-famous Ukrainian composers who have been virtually wiped off the face of the earth.
The History of the Sugar Brodsky Dynasty and a Canadian Branch of the Family
This account is the heritage of generations from time out of mind, that I have worked to recover. Because I have tried to place the history of this family in its wider setting, the story is apt to be discursive and digressive in places, where I try to get at the meaning of events, their wider significance. So, a number of perhaps interruptive obiter dicta appear, which are meant to illuminate, and not, as I fear, obscure the narrative’s progress. The Brodsky family, after all, has undergone a vast sea change from its origins.Culturally, I am British, Canadian, and secular. With a gentile mother, I am what some Jews would call “deracinated.” Because of my heritage, my identity is an amalgam, which includes being a Jew no less that its other constituents. Most Jews, and others, would demur that I have no right to claim that identity. But what’s in a name? History is history, descent is descent. In the immortal words of Popeye the indomitable cartoon voyager ashore, “I yam what I yam.”