Music, Exile, and Genocide: Medz Yeghern and the Holocaust

A Public History and Musicology StoryMap Project

This project, a coalescence of my scholarly interests and my training as a classical pianist, tells the story of two unspeakable genocides of the twentieth century through a combinations of voices that either experienced or were inspired by these episodes of mass violence. Here, I interlace audiovisual testimonies of survivors of the Medz Yeghern (or commonly known as the Armenian Genocide) and the Holocaust with related musical compositions in order to create a polyphonic and visceral experience. In conceptualizing and executing this project, my goal was to present these musical works, most of which are thrown into oblivion, in a more meaningful way by also resounding the silenced victims of two of the major genocides in history.

Content Warning: This project involves narratives of violence and death that might be emotionally difficult to engage with.

(This project is supported by the Artivism Student Action Program from the UW-Madison Division of Arts)