Featured Composers
Born in Pfaffenhofen-an-der-Ilm, Germany in 1969, is of Kurdish descent but has never lived in his ethnic homeland nor in the town where he was born. Educated in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Austria, Poland and the United States, Gawlick holds degrees from the University of California Santa Barbara, the University of Texas at Austin and the New England Conservatory of Music.
Similarly, his music travels far afield by drawing inspiration from and engaging with literary, visual and musical landcapes both in time and place. This dialogue across centuries and among the arts informs much of his solo, chamber, orchestral, film and vocal music. Performed throughout the United States and Europe and broadcast on American National Public Radio, his works have received numerous accolades including awards and fellowships from the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM), the Massachusetts Cultural Council, ASCAP as well as support and sponsorship from the German Consulate General Boston, the Boston and Munich Goethe Institutes and the German Embassy (Washington DC). His music is available through Brazinmusikanta Publications and the American Music Center and released on Capstone Records and Musica Omnia.
Ralf Yusuf Gawlick teaches at Boston College and lives in Newton, MA, with his wife Basia and their two children.
Kinderkreuzzug Cantata
Notes by composer Ralf Gawlick
In the years following his 1933 escape from Nazi Germany, Bertolt Brecht penned some of his most extraordinary and grim anti-war poetry. This bitter, anti-war literary crusade finds one of its most poignant expressions in a ballad of thirty-five 4-line stanzas. Brecht’s simple and direct tone betrays a lyric force and beauty that stems from and unfolds in an unadorned and episodic story-telling style that is never sentimental or callous.
Kinderkreuzzug is a dramatic cantata for children’s voices and small chamber ensemble including clarinet, string trio (violin, viola and cello), church hand bells and organ. The story is simple: in 1939, fifty war-orphaned children embark from Poland in search of a land of peace… Brecht’s socio-political commentary is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1941.
There is nothing new in the deprivation, want, suffering, and death Brecht profiles; nor is there any redemptive moral hidden in the lost innocence, dogged hope, and simple sincerity of this little band of children. They are neither martyrs nor goodwill heralds but simply orphans who are hungry and tired. Their plight and wretchedness is actually quite unremarkable and an all-too familiar tale as each generation from time past to time present bears witness to such pitiful crusades. Even hope has become ordinary. In fact, the only extraordinary outcome would be for these children to actually find a land of peace. Probable?
This music is written for the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII. Brecht’s children still walk and suffer in our collective conscience. Although my music may not give bread, it may just harbor their hope, and ours, for the extraordinary.
SPONSORS & SUPPORTERS
Goethe Institute in Boston
Goethe Institute in Munich
Newton Cultural Council
German Consulate General Boston
School of Arts & Sciences and Institute of Liberal Arts, BC
PERFORMERS
Knabenchor der Chorakademie Dortmund, Jost Salm
Treble Chorus of New England, Valerie J. Becker
Youth Pro Musica, Robert Barney
Richard Shaughnessy, clarinet
Blanka Bednarz, violin
Elizabeth Kuefler, Viola
Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello
Heinrich Christensen, organ
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Ralf Yusuf Gawlick