From archival silence to archival violence

Reflecting on the concept of archival silence raises several questions: Is archival silence violence? Who is causing harm and to whom? Who is responsible for doing something about it?

Figure 1. Photograph of three composers: Ernesto Halffter, Ann-Elise Hannikainen and Óscar Esplá, s.a. Source: No. 359, Archivo Ernesto Halffter, Fundación Juan March.

In October 2023, I travelled to Madrid to explore the archive of the Spanish composer Ernesto Halffter (1905–1989). His papers are deposited at the Juan March Foundation where they were donated in 2018 by the composer’s son. Before my journey, I hypothesised that there would be no material related to Halffter’s partner and most notable pupil, the Finnish-born composer and pianist Ann-Elise Hannikainen (1946–2012) (more about Hannikainen’s career and life, see Virtanen 2021a, 2021b and 2023). I based my assumption on Hannikainen being absent from the written history of Spanish classical music and completely invisible in Halffter’s biography (Acker and Suárez-Pajares 1997), the reception of Halffter’s centenary festivities (Acker 2006; Carredano 2006; Pascual 2005; Persia 2005; Piquer Sanclemente 2006; Ripoll 2005), and the deposition process of Ernesto Halffter’s archive (Pérez Castillo 2020).

Already while preparing my trip, I was informed by the archivist that my hypothesis was correct. I would find no documents whatsoever related to Ann-Elise Hannikainen. I informed the employee that I would nevertheless travel to Madrid to experience the archival silence myself.

What is silence made of?

The Haitian American anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995: 26), a pioneer writer on archival silence, suggests that archival silence develops in four stages. These include the creation of facts (the generation of sources), the assembly of facts (the establishment of archives), the retrieval of facts (the construction of narratives), and the retrospective attribution of significance (the ultimate formation of history). I am particularly interested in the first two stages of Trouillot’s classification: What kind of documents exist about the relationship between Halffter and Hannikainen and how do they become visible in Halffter’s archive?

For my travel reading, I had with me a book by Michael Moss and David Thomas, Archival Silences (2021). According to them (2021: 11), archival silence is a sort of passive state. It emerges when researchers search for particular pieces of information within the archive: “until then, they are uncreated and potential rather than actual” (Moss and Thomas 2021: 11). From this point of view, the archival silence surrounding Ann-Elise Hannikainen only came into existence the moment I opened the first archival box in Madrid. However, I am at odds with the passive nature of this idea of archival silence. I find it problematic because it completely sidesteps the question of responsibility, as if archives were merely formed by chance and institutions would openly accept any set of documents without further question.

The Columbian journalist and author Pedro Adrián Zuluaga has written about how an archive is certainly not a calm and silent place but a battlefield between official history, private memories and different kinds of marginalised stories. This is why, according to Zuluaga, archives are repressed or subjected to systematic practices of forgetting, suppression, or neglect. What I discovered in Ernesto Halffter’s archive certainly reminded me of this. Therefore, I would rather use the word archival violence to address the active and severe nature of this matter. The Cambridge Dictionary defines violence as “extremely forceful actions that are intended to hurt people or are likely to cause damage”. 

Where is she?

As I had been assured beforehand, Ernesto Halffter’s archive in the Juan March Foundation does not indeed contain a single letter between Halffter and Ann-Elise Hannikainen, even though they lived together for fifteen years, sharing a home and everyday life. Should I conclude from this that such correspondence never existed, that it has been lost over time or that it has been destroyed?

Michael Moss and David Thomas (2021: 11–12) warn researchers against falling into confirmation bias. According to them, “the fact that a user believes that there is a gap or silence in the archives may not necessarily be true” (Moss and Thomas 2021: 11). Confirmation bias can lead people to selectively gather and consider evidence, favouring information that supports their existing views while ignoring or downplaying evidence that contradicts them. I recognise this risk, having witnessed countless times during my years of research the invisibility of Ann-Elise Hannikainen in Spanish records. What if I was wrong, perhaps Hannikainen and Halffter did not write letters to each other and that is why Halffter’s archive leaves Hannikainen in the dark? Perhaps their life together was not what I had imagined in the first place?

Luckily, Ann-Elise Hannikainen herself maintained a comprehensive collection of newspaper clippings and correspondence. Thus, Hannikainen’s private archive forms a kind of second half of Ernesto Halffter’s archive, making the archival violence visible. Hannikainen’s private archive reveals the depth of her professional and private relationship with Halffter as well as the enormous importance of her parents as a kind of chosen family of Halffter. In an undated letter to Ann-Elise Hannikainen’s parents, Ernesto Halffter writes:

You know well that we form a united family that no one can separate. So I think and so I say to you[1] [underlining by Halffter, original in Spanish, translation by the author].

In Halffter’s archive, however, this united family is broken. The material donated to the Juan March Foundation does not contain a single letter written by Ann-Elise Hannikainen or her parents. In fact, at the moment, there is no mention of Hannikainen in any of the descriptive records in the archive. Of course, this does not mean that Ernesto Halffter’s archive does not contain clues.

In Madrid, I went through all of the nearly 3000 letters held in the archive (except for the correspondence between Ernesto Halffter and Manuel de Falla) and the entire collection of 781 photographs. Among the correspondence, I found twenty-nine mentions of Hannikainen. Almost all of them were short introductory or concluding greetings in letters to Ernesto Halffter. The most extensive reference to Hannikainen is found in a letter from Halffter to conductor Igor Markevitsch (dated 16 March 1975):

My pupil, Ann[-]Elise Hannikainen, was very impressed with you; she is now giving a series of recitals all over Andalucia with works of Chopin, hers and mine. She may well accompany me to Rome and will bring the score of her Variations for orchestra and also the tape for you to listen to. She has a great talent, it is excellent music and I am convinced that she will have a great career.[2] [original in Spanish, translation by the author]

In the collection of photos, Hannikainen is present in nine images, in most of them only indirectly or otherwise in the background, as in the photograph (Figure 1) where she is literally in the shadow of two male composers. An example of indirect presence is the photograph (Figure 2) which shows Ernesto Halffter posing in front of Ann-Elise Hannikainen’s grand piano in the couple’s home in Madrid. Hannikainen’s portrait is in the foreground on the deck of the instrument.

Figure 2. Photograph of Ernesto Halffter in his and Ann-Elise Hannikainen’s home in Madrid, s.a. Source: No. 519, Archivo Ernesto Halffter, Fundación Juan March.

Who bears the responsibility?

In addition to containing only minor references to Ann-Elise Hannikainen, Ernesto Halffter's archive does not contain correspondence between the Halffter family, correspondence between Halffter and his son, family photographs from the time before Hannikainen, or much of what can be considered private or everyday, either. It seems, therefore, that Halffter's archive has been deliberately compiled in such a way that it focuses on his professional activities. Of course, such a focus is by no means impermissible, even if it may seem inadequate for an individual researcher. However, since Hannikainen’s private archive extensively demonstrates also the significance of her professional relationship with Halffter, as a researcher I must consider the possibility that Hannikainen’s presence in Halffter’s archive has been reduced to a minimum on purpose; that her omission from the archive has been intentional. If that is the case, then I can no longer talk about silence but about violence.

Moss and Thomas (2021: 11) stress the responsibility of the creators of archival collections, i.e. archivists and the institutions in power, to prevent archival silence. My own archival journey leads me to reflect especially on the responsibility of the institutions that hold archives in cataloguing, describing and making them available to researchers. Are archives truly just passive repositories and enablers of researchers’ work, or should archives have a clearer self-understanding of what they contain, and above all, a duty to reflect on what they leave out?

[1]Original in Spanish: “Bien sabéis que formamos una familia unida a la que nadie podrá separar. Así lo pienso y así os lo digo.”

[2] Original in Spanish: “Mi discípula, Ann[-] Elise Hannikainen, se quedó muy impresionada contigo; ahora darà una serie de recitales por toda Andalucía con obras de Chopin, mías y suyas. Es muy posible que me acompañe a Roma y llevarà la partitura de sus Variaciones para orquesta y también la cinta para que la escuches. Tiene un gran talento, es música excelente y estoy convencido que hará una gran carrera.”

Markus Virtanen is a doctoral researcher at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. He is also a composer and a music journalist at the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle.

Bibliography

Acker, Yolanda (2006) ”Ernesto Halffter en el centenario de su nacimiento”. Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana volumen II/2006, 5–15.

Acker, Yolanda & Suárez-Pajares, Javier (eds.) (1997) Músico en dos tiempos. Madrid: Residencia de Estudiantes.

Carredano, Consuelo (2006) ”Devociones ejemplares: algunas pautas en la relación de Manuel de Falla y Ernesto Halffter”. Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana volumen II/2006, 17–50.

Moss, Michael & Thomas, David (2021) ”Theorising the silences”. Archival Silences. Missing, Lost, and Uncreated Archives. Edited by Michael Moss and David Thomas. New York: Routledge, 10–25.

Pascual, Josep (2005) ”Una vida y una obra a la sombra de Falla”. Scherzo Año XX - No 195 - Marzo 2005, 114–116.

Pérez Castillo, Belén (2020) ”Ernesto Halffter a través de los ojos de su hijo Manuel”. Fundacion Juan March. https://canal.march.es/es/coleccion/ernesto-halffter-traves-ojos-su-hijo-manuel-24262 (accessed 16 October 2023).

Persia, Jorge de (2005) ”Entre el espíritu y la letra”. Scherzo Año XX - No 195 - Marzo 2005, 118–121.

Piquer Sanclemente, Ruth (2006) ”Aspectos estéticos del Neoclasicismo musical en la obra de Ernesto Halffter”. Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana volumen II/2006, 51–82.

Ripoll, José Ramón (2005) ”Ernesto Halffter y su entorno cultural”. Scherzo Año XX - No 195 - Marzo 2005, 122–126.

Virtanen, Markus (2021a). ”Nukkekodin varpusen moraaliton konsertto: Arvoja, ihanteita ja uuden musiikin kuvia Ann-Elise Hannikaisen pianokonserton lehdistöreseptiossa vuonna 1976”. Musiikki 3/2021, 48–73. https://doi.org/10.51816/musiikki.111758.

Virtanen, Markus (2021b). Hannikainen, Ann-Elise. Kansallisbiografia-verkkojulkaisu. Studia Biographica 4. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1997. http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:sks-kbg-010156

Virtanen, Markus (2023). ”’Tottahan toki pidän ruoanlaitosta, mutta mieluiten kuitenkin sävellän’. Säveltävän naisen representaatioita Ann-Elise Hannikaisen aikakauslehtihaastatteluissa.” Naiset, musiikki, tutkimus – ennen ja nyt. Edited by Saijaleena Rantanen, Nuppu Koivisto-Kaasik and Anu Lampela. Acta Musicologica Militantia V & DocMus-tohtorikoulun julkaisuja 21, 213–243.