Ich bin heute ja so verliebt // Music from Auschwitz

Ich bin heute ja so verliebt
[I Am so in Love Today]
Willi Schmidt-Gentner (music) &
Hans Fritz Beckman (text)
Music from Auschwitz
- Dance Band Arrangements by Members of the
Auschwitz I Men’s Orchestra
- Performed by Musicians from the University of Michigan
School of Music, Theatre & Dance - Oriol Sans, Conductor
The ten short pieces on this program were arranged by Polish political prisoners who were
members of the Auschwitz I men’s orchestra. Using popular German hits of the thirties and
forties, they arranged and orchestrated these tangos, waltzes and foxtrots for a dance band
that played Sunday concerts for the Auschwitz garrison near Commandant Rudolf Höss’s villa. The
resulting manuscripts, which University of Michigan Professor of Music Theory Patricia Hall began researching in May 2016, are preserved at the Collections
Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Occasionally prisoners signed
these manuscripts with their prisoner number, like Antoni Gargul, a violist and Polish soldier
(5665), or Maksymilian Piłat, (5131), a bassoonist with a conservatory degree who played in
the orchestra of the State Opera and Baltic Philharmonic in Gdansk after the war.
In realizing these manuscripts, we have maintained the original orchestration
as closely as possible, and made only minute alterations when there were obvious
errors. Silent for over seventy years, listeners will hear these works as close as possible to how
they would have sounded in 1942 or ’43, when they were performed in Auschwitz I. The lines
spoken by our singers are from testimonies and interviews with members of the Auschwitz I
men’s orchestra after the war.
ENSEMBLE PERSONNEL
Oriol Sans, Conductor
VIOLIN
Eugenia Cho
Beau Henson
Aidan Krieger
Alex Ott
Allison Taylor
Kisa Uradomo
Iris Wu
Caleb Zheng
VIOLA
Hannah Langenbach
Ben Martz
CELLO
Dakota Cotugno
CLARINET
Jesse Bruer
Ellé Crowhurst
SAXOPHONE
Salvador Flores
Brian Kachur
Roberto Campa
TROMBONE
Frankie Lazzara
TUBA
Jacob Taitel
VOICE
Jono Taccolini, tenor
Nicholas Music, tenor
Noah Rogers, baritone
Robert Wesley Mason, bass
TRANSLATIONS
Lee Rothfarb
Barbara Alvarez
TRANSCRIPTIONS
Patricia Hall
Joshua DeVries
Andrew Kohler
QUARTET COACH
Stephen West
LYRICS
Ich bin heute ja so verliebt,
Wie heut’ war ich noch nie verliebt, Mein Herz möchte vor Glück vergeh’n, Noch nie war das Leben so schön.
Ich tausch nicht für Millionen ein, Die Freude so verliebt zu sein,
Ich frag nicht was geschieht,
Wenn dieses Glück morgen entflieht, Heut’ Nacht will ich nicht fragen, Will dir nur sagen mit meinem Lied:
Ich bin heute ja so verliebt, So unsagbar verliebt,
In wen, soll ich’s gesteh’n? Frage ich mich...
Wer weiß, vielleicht in dich!
Today I am just so in love,
Never was I so much in love as today.
My heart may fade away from good fortune, Never was life so beautiful.
I would not for millions exchange
The joy of being so in love.
I won’t ask what happened,
If tomorrow this luck vanishes.
This evening I don’t want to pose any questions, I want only to speak to you with my song.
Today I am just so in love,
So unspeakably in love.
With whom, I should confess, I ask myself...
Who knows, perhaps with you!