One of the most unforgettable personal histories of World War II is that of Anne (Annelies Marie, actually) Frank (1929-1945), the German-born Jewish girl originally from Frankfurt, whose diary of life in hiding in the Netherlands - until her and her family’s capture by the Nazis in 1944 - is a hauntingly touching document from that heinous era of the 20th Century, the Holocaust.

On her 13th birthday, June 12, 1942 – already in hiding in secluded rooms in her father’s office building in Amsterdam - she was given a diary, and until August 1, 1944 and the family’s capture, she candidly chronicled her daily life and that of her family and companions, and their situation. Anne Frank died of typhus in a German concentration camp, a few days after the death there of her sister. Her father, Otto Frank, the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war, and to his astonishment, found the diary. It was published first in German in 1950, then in English in 1952 in both Britain and the United States. It has never been out of print since then. The 1955 play, and the 1959 movie based on it, brought the diary to further worldwide audiences.

Otto Frank said of his daughter’s diary, “For me it was a revelation…I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings…She kept all these feelings to herself.”

Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia (which has an exhaustive and fascinating article on the Frank history and the diary) has the following quote from poet John Berryman, who described the diary as a unique depiction, not merely of adolescence but of the “conversion of a child into a person as it is happening in a precise, confident, economical style stunning in its honesty.”

I Remember, based on the diaries of Anne Frank, is a song-cycle for voice, flute, ‘cello, and harp, with a libretto by Enid Futterman and music by Michael Cohen.

Ms. Futterman has written the following comments:

“When I read her diary, I identified with Anne, because I too was a dark-haired, green-eyed, slightly-built, 14 year old Jewish girl, trying to become a woman and a writer. I didn’t understand the difference between us was greater than the difference between the horror of Belsen and the shelter of Brooklyn. Perhaps the real difference was just the opposite: Anne Frank did not think or write like a victim. She knew evil, but she also knew something about the essential goodness of the soul, if not the character. Evil triumphed in Bergen-Belsen, but the spiritual war was won. For me that is the point of her diary. Anne died, but she won.

“It is our attempt, Michael Cohen’s and mine, to present Anne Frank as the woman she was, and the survivor she is – a Jew who transcended her own suffering, and her own death.”

Mr. Cohen has described his composition as “a distillation of the psychological and spiritual journey of Anne Frank during her time in hiding, made possible by her precocious sensitivity and talent.”

A 1955 review of the work in All Music Guide made some interesting points about I Remember, excerpted as follows:

“This is one of several works Cohen has written about Anne Frank. He worked on (this music) and his orchestral song cycle, I Am Anne Frank, at the same time; they received their premières in 1996.

“Futterman’s text doesn’t quite literally quote the English translation of the original Dutch. At times, the text is a close paraphrase and elsewhere it expresses ‘…what she may have only suggested or implied,’ as Futterman wrote.

“Cohen considers it a work of vocal chamber music rather than strictly song cycle. (The full cycle) contains eight movements. As Anne’s outer life is more and more restricted, her inner life opens up, as does her longing for what she can never have. All of this is expressed in a succession of movements, including a nightmare that prompts her to re-examine herself.

“After composing the work, a dispute among the players and composer as to precisely how the work should end caused Cohen to remember in a dream that he had, without realizing the significance, opened the work with the note A and ended it with the note F, thereby embracing the whole composition within Anne’s initials.”

Ernest Bloch (1882-1959) emigrated from his native Switzerland to the United States in 1916 and became an American citizen in 1924. He was both composer and teacher, and he headed the Cleveland Institute of Music for five years, and the San Francisco Conservatory for another five.

The most often quoted characteristic of Bloch’s music is how it expresses his Jewish heritage, but Grove’s Dictionary of Music (1955 edition) points out, “…it is important to know that Bloch’s music has no merely superficial Jewish character, imparted to it by adoption of Hebrew songs and other ready-made material…his work is Jewish simply because his artistic nature happens to have fitted him to give expression to the racial currents that flow in his veins. He does so in a language that is his own, and thus his music reflects as much his individuality as his race.”

From Jewish Life is a set of three short “sketches” (as the composer called them) completed in 1924 and written, originally, for ‘cello and piano. Prayer, the first of the three – and one of the best-known of all Bloch pieces - has been described as having “an atmosphere of intense sadness and inward feeling,” while the work as a whole has been characterized as “far less linked with virtuosity than with the power of expression and Faith.”

Charles Lichter (1910-1990) attended the Juilliard School from 1926-1933 for orchestral conducting. His symphonic work “A Vermont Summer” premiered in 1991.