Kafka's Jewishness, in music (as is everything else on this blog)

I do believe this work represents Kafka very well. This is the first movement of Viktor Ullmann's Piano Sonata no. 6. Ullmann, a Czech Jew, wrote this during his time in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and its expression of angst is evident - the tremolos in the beginning, as well as the adiatonicity of many of the rows of chords, displays that. Kafka was also a Czech Jew, who no doubt faced persecution as well. Although Ullmann wrote his sonata 30 years after The Trial was written, both Ullmann and Kafka would have faced similar experiences of Jews - Ullmann was in Nazi Germany, and Kafka was in Austria-Hungary, which was desperately trying to suppress all of its minorities in order to hold onto its empire. "Der Prozess" contains themes relating to Jewish oppression - the only entire name of the main character, for example, is Josef, a good Jewish name. Furthermore, when Josef is detained, he is detained by men named Rabensteiner and Kullich, a German and Czech name respectively, showing the reality at the time that everybody was against the Jews.