Miserae

In this year I recognised that it was necessary to bear witness, not out of distress and fear of that power, but as opposition. I convinced myself that freedom would eventually be won even if at the destruction of ourselves – that I always believed. During this period I composed my first string quartet, the symphonic poem ‘Miserae’, and my first symphony to words of Walt Whitman ‘I sit and watch all the troubles of the world and all distress and shame ...’. This repudiatory intellectual involvement is already manifest in the dedication ‘Meinen Freunden, die hundertfach sterben mußten, die für die Ewigkeit schlafen – wir vergessen Euch nicht. (Dachau 1933-34)’. (From the autobiographical sketch of Karl Amadeus Hartmann)