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Something Understood

Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: May His Memory Be a Blessing

May His Memory Be a Blessing

28/09/2014

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, May His Memory Be a Blessing

Michael Zev Gordon reflects on the idea of the persistence of memory.

Taking the Jewish honorific 'may his memory be a blessing', the composer Michael Zev Gordon reflects on the idea of the persistence of memory.

Within the Jewish tradition, it's common to use the honorific 'may his memory be a blessing' when writing of the dead. The composer Michael Zev Gordon uses this phrase to reflect on the idea that so much of what we are is locked in memory, but that we only grasp this fully when it starts to slip away.

He draws on writings by Proust and W.G.Sebald, poems by Carol Ann Duffy and Marjorie Agosin, and musical excerpts from JS Bach, Thomas Ades, Robert Schumann, his own piano piece entitled 'On Memory' and the music hall song that was one of his father's last triggers to memory and identity, 'Daisy Bell'.

Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.

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