VA - Forbidden Not Forgotten: Suppressed Music From 1938-1945 (2003, Hommage # 7001891-HOM)

Gideon Klein (6 December 1919 – c. January 1945) was a Czech pianist and composer of classical music, organizer of cultural life in Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Klein was born into a Moravian Jewish family in Přerov and, showing musical talent early, studied piano with Růžena Kurzová and Vilém Kurz, and composition with Alois Hába (in 1939–1940). He was forced to discontinue his studies in 1940 at the university when the Nazis closed all institutions of higher learning following their occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Since compositions and performances by Jewish musicians were banned, his own works could not be played, though he managed to perform as a concert pianist under several aliases for a time, a.o. under the name of Karel Vranek. In 1940 he was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London, but by that time anti-Jewish legislation prevented his emigration.

In December 1941 he was deported by the Nazis to Terezín concentration camp, where along with Leoš Janáček's pupil Pavel Haas, Hans Krása, and Schoenberg's pupil Viktor Ullmann he became one of the major composers in that camp, one of the few in which artistic activity occurred on any scale. His works from these years include music for string quartet (similar in tone to Berg's opus 3 work), a string trio, and a piano sonata among others. Klein performed also as solo pianist at least on 15 recitals, and he participated also in chamber music performances (member of piano trio, piano quartet).

He was deported to Auschwitz and then to Fürstengrube in October 1944, less than two weeks after completing his string trio. He died under unclear circumstances during liquidation of the Fürstengrube camp in January 1945.

His work was influenced by Alois Hába, Alban Berg, and particularly by Leoš Janáček. He used melody from Janáček's Zápisník zmizelého as a theme in his Divertimento (1940).

Recordings on Northeastern and on Koch International Classics, for example, have allowed modern listeners to evaluate the quality of his compositions of the 1940s.

Viktor Ullmann (1 January 1898, in Teschen – 18 October 1944, in KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau) was a Silesia-born Austrian composer, conductor and pianist of Jewish origin.

Viktor Ullmann was born on January 1, 1898 in Těšín (Teschen), modern Český Těšín / Cieszyn. It belonged then to Silesia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now divided between Cieszyn in Poland and Český Těšín in Czechoslovakia. Both his parents were from families of Jewish descent, but had converted to Roman Catholicism before Viktor's birth. As an assimilated Jew, his father, Maximilian, was able to pursue a career as a professional officer in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In World War I he was promoted to colonel and ennobled.

One writer has described Ullman's milieu in these terms: "Like such other assimilated German-speaking Czech Jews as Kafka and Mahler, Ullmann lived a life of multiple estrangements, cut off from Czech nationalism, German anti-Semitism and Jewish orthodoxy".

Beginning in 1909 Viktor attended a grammar school (Gymnasium) in Vienna. His musical talents and inclinations soon gave him access to Arnold Schönberg and his circle of pupils. Upon finishing school, he volunteered for military service.

After deployment on the Italian Front at Isonzo [clarification needed], he was granted study leave, which he used to start studying law at Vienna University. There he also attended the lectures of Wilhelm Jerusalem. At the beginning of 1918 he was accepted in Schönberg's composition seminar. With Schönberg he studied the theory of form, counterpoint and orchestration. Ullmann was an excellent pianist, although he had no ambitions for a career as a soloist.

In May 1919, he broke off both courses of study and left Vienna in order to devote himself fully to music in Prague. His mentor was now Alexander von Zemlinsky, under whose direction he served as a conductor at the New German Theatre of Prague (now the Prague State Opera) until 1927. In the following season, 1927–28, he was appointed head of the opera company in Aussig an der Elbe (Ústí nad Labem), but his repertoire, including operas by Richard Strauss, Krenek and others, was too advanced for local tastes, and his appointment was terminated.

In 1923 with the Sieben Lieder mit Klavier (7 Songs with Piano) he witnessed a series of successful performances of his works, which lasted until the beginning of the 1930s (Sieben Serenaden). At the Geneva music festival of the International Society for New Music in 1929, his Schönberg Variations, a piano cycle on a theme by his teacher in Vienna, caused something of a stir. Five years later, for the orchestral arrangement of this work, he was awarded the Hertzka Prize, named in honor of the former director of Universal Editions. In the meantime he had been appointed conductor in Zürich for two years. As a result of his interest in anthroposophy, a movement founded by Rudolf Steiner, he spent another two years as a bookseller in Stuttgart, but was forced to flee Germany in mid-1933 and returned to Prague as a music teacher and journalist.

During this period he worked with the department of music at Czechoslovak Radio, wrote book and music reviews for various magazines, wrote as a critic for the Bohemia newspaper, lectured to educational groups, gave private lessons, and was actively involved in the program of the Czechoslovak Society for Music Education. At about this time Ullmann made friends with the composer Alois Hába, whom he had known for some time. Ullmann enrolled in Hába's department of quarter tone music at the Prague Conservatory, where he studied from 1935 to 1937.

While his works of the 1920s still clearly show the influence of Schönberg's atonal period, especially the Chamber Symphony Op. 9, the George Songs Op. 15 and Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, Ullmann's compositions from 1935 onwards, like the String Quartet No. 2 and Piano Sonata No. 1, are distinguished by his independent development of Schönberg's inspirations. Similarly the opera Fall of the Antichrist develops the issues raised by Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck. Dissonant harmonics, highly charged musical expression, and masterly control of formal structure are characteristic of Ullmann's new and henceforth unmistakable personal style.

Pavel Haas (21 June 1899 – 17 October 1944) was a Czech composer who was murdered during the Holocaust. He was an exponent of Leoš Janáček's school of composition, and also utilized elements of folk music and jazz. Although his output was not large, he is notable particularly for his song cycles and string quartets.

Haas was born in Brno, into a Jewish family. His father, Zikmund, a shoemaker by trade, was from the Moravian region; while his mother, Olga (née Epstein), was born in Odessa. After studying piano privately, Haas began his more formal musical education at the age of 14, and studied composition at the Brno Conservatory from 1919 to 1921 under Jan Kunc and Vilém Petrželka. This was followed by two years of study in the master class of the noted Czech composer Leoš Janáček. Janáček was far and away Haas's most influential teacher, and Haas, in turn, proved to be Janáček's best student.[citation needed] In 1935 he married Soňa Jakobson, the former wife of Russian linguist Roman Jakobson.[2]

Of the more than 50 works Haas wrote during the next two decades, only 18 were given opus numbers by the self-critical composer. While still working in his father's business, he wrote musical works of all kinds, including symphonic and choral works, lieder, chamber music, and scores for cinema and theatre. His opera, Šarlatán (The Charlatan), was first performed in Brno to sincere acclaim in April 1938. He received the Smetana Foundation award for the opera (sharing the award with Vítězslava Kaprálová who received it for her Military Sinfonietta).

In 1941, Haas was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezín). He was one of several Czech-Jewish composers there, including Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein and Hans Krása. Prior to his arrest, he had officially divorced his wife Soňa in order that she and their young daughter would not suffer a similar fate. On his arrival, he became very depressed and had to be coaxed into composition by Gideon Klein. Haas wrote at least eight compositions in the camp, only a few of which have survived. They include a set of Four Songs on Chinese Poetry for baritone and piano, a work for men's choir titled "Al s'fod" (his first and only work in Hebrew), and the Study for String Orchestra which was premiered in Theresienstadt under the Czech conductor Karel Ančerl and is probably Haas's best-known work today. The orchestral parts were found by Ančerl after the liberation of Theresienstadt and the score was reconstructed.

In 1944 the Nazis remodeled Theresienstadt just before a visit from the Red Cross, and a propaganda film, Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives the Jews a City), was made by director Kurt Gerron, under the coercion of the camp commandant, Karl Rahm. In the film, Theresienstadt, children are seen singing Hans Krása's opera, Brundibár, and Haas can be seen taking a bow after a performance, conducted by Karel Ančerl, of his Study for Strings. When the propaganda project was over, the Nazis transferred 18,000 prisoners, including Haas and the children who had sung in Brundibár, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were murdered in the gas chambers. According to the testimony of Karel Ančerl, Haas stood next to him after their arrival at Auschwitz. Doctor Mengele was about to send Ančerl to the gas chamber first, but the weakened Haas began to cough, so the death sentence was therefore chosen for him, instead. After the war Ančerl met with Haas's brother Hugo and told him the story.

Haas's large-scale symphony, which he began prior to his deportation to Theresienstadt, remained unfinished, but the surviving torso was orchestrated by Zdeněk Zouhar in 1994. Haas's music, stemming from Bohemian and Moravian roots, is sometimes tinted by Hebrew melody.

Haas has been described as "a reserved but eloquent student of Janáček" by Alex Ross in his history of classical music in the 20th century, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.

His brother Hugo Haas (1901–1968) was a popular actor in pre-war Czechoslovakia.

Hans Krása (30 November 1899 – 17 October 1944) was a Czech composer, murdered during the Holocaust at Auschwitz. He helped to organize cultural life in Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Hans Krása was born in Prague to a Czech father who was a lawyer, and a German Jewish mother.[citation needed] He studied both the piano and violin as a child and went on to study composition at the German Music Academy in Prague. After graduating, he went on to become a répétiteur at the Neues Deutsches Theater, where he met the composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky, who had a major influence on Krása's career.

In 1927 he followed Zemlinsky to Berlin, where he was introduced to Albert Roussel. Krása, whose primary influences were Mahler, Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, also felt an affinity with French music, especially the group of composers known as Les Six and made a number of trips to France to study under Roussel whilst he lived in Berlin. Krása eventually returned, homesick, to Prague to resume his old job as a répétiteur at the Neues Deutsches Theater. His debut as a composer came with his Four Orchestral Songs op. 1, based on the Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs) of Christian Morgenstern. The work was first performed under Zemlinsky's direction in Prague in May 1921 and was widely acclaimed. There followed a string quartet, a set of five songs for voice and piano and his Symphonie für kleines Orchester, which was performed in Zurich, Paris and Boston. His major achievement, however, was the opera Verlobung im Traum (Betrothal in a Dream) after the novel Uncle's Dream by Dostoyevsky. This work was first performed at the Neues Deutsches Theater in Prague in 1933 under Georg Szell and was awarded the Czechoslovak State Prize.[citation needed]

Brundibár, a children's opera based on a play by Aristophanes, was the last work Krása completed before he was arrested by the Nazis on 10 August 1942. Krása was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto where he reworked Brundibár for the available forces, which was then performed 55 times in the camp and also features in the infamous propaganda film made for the Red Cross in 1944. While he was interned in the ghetto, Krása was at his most productive, producing a number of chamber works although, due to the circumstances, some of these have not survived.

Along with fellow composers Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas and Gideon Klein, Krása was taken to Auschwitz. He was murdered on 17 October 1944; he was not yet 45 years old.

Karl Amadeus Hartmann (2 August 1905 – 5 December 1963) was a German composer. Some have lauded him as the greatest German symphonist of the 20th century, although he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries.

Born in Munich, well known there for his flower paintings, the son of Friedrich Richard Hartmann, and the youngest of four brothers of whom the elder three also became painters, Hartmann was himself torn, early in his career, between music and the visual arts. He was much affected in his early political development by the events of the unsuccessful Workers’ Revolution in Bavaria that followed the collapse of the German empire at the end of World War I (see Bavarian Soviet Republic). He remained an idealistic socialist for the rest of his life.

At the Munich Academy in the 1920s, Hartmann studied with Joseph Haas, a pupil of Max Reger, and later he received intellectual stimulus and encouragement from the conductor Hermann Scherchen, an ally of the Schoenberg school, with whom he had a nearly lifelong mentor-protégé relationship. He voluntarily withdrew completely from musical life in Germany during the Nazi era, while remaining in Germany, and refused to allow his works to be played there. An early symphonic poem, Miserae (1933–1934, first performed in Prague, 1935) was condemned by the Nazi regime; but his work continued to be performed, and his fame grew, abroad.

During World War II, though already an experienced composer, Hartmann submitted to a course of private tuition in Vienna by Schoenberg’s pupil Anton Webern (with whom he often disagreed on a personal and political level). Although stylistically their music had little in common, he clearly felt that he needed, and benefitted from, Webern’s acute perfectionism.

After the fall of Hitler, Hartmann was one of the few prominent surviving anti-fascists in Bavaria whom the postwar Allied administration could appoint to a position of responsibility. In 1945, he became a Dramaturg at the Bavarian State Opera and there, as one of the few internationally recognized figures who had survived untainted by any collaboration with the Nazi regime, he became a vital figure in the rebuilding of (West) German musical life. Perhaps his most notable achievement was the Musica Viva concert series, which he founded and ran for the rest of his life in Munich. Beginning in November 1945, the concerts reintroduced the German public to 20th-century repertoire, which had been banned since 1933 under National Socialist aesthetic policy. Hartmann also provided a platform for the music of the young composers who came to the fore in the late 1940s and early 1950s, helping to establish such figures as Hans Werner Henze, Luigi Nono, Luigi Dallapiccola, Carl Orff, Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Bernd Alois Zimmermann and many others. Hartmann also involved sculptors and artists such as Jean Cocteau, Le Corbusier, and Joan Miró in exhibitions at Musica Viva.

He was accorded numerous honours after the war, including the Musikpreis of the city of Munich in March 1949. This was followed by the Kunstpreis of the Bayrische Akademie der Schönen Künste (1950), the Arnold Schönberg Medal of the IGNM (1954), the Große Kunstpreis of the Land Nordrhein-Westfalen (1957), as well as the Ludwig Spohr Award of the city of Braunschweig, the Schwabing Kunstpreis (1961) and the Bavarian Medal of Merit (1959). In addition, Hartmann became a member of the Academy of Arts in Munich (1952) and Berlin (1955) and received an honorary doctorate from Spokane Conservatory, Washington (1962). It should be noted that his socialist sympathies did not at all include communism. In the 1950s, he refused an offer to move to East Germany.

He continued to base his activities in Munich for the remainder of his life, and his administrative duties came to absorb much of his time and energy. This reduced his opportunities for composition, and his last years were dogged by serious illness. In 1963, he died from stomach cancer at the age of 58, leaving his last work – an extended symphonic Gesangsszene for voice and orchestra on words from Jean Giraudoux’s apocalyptic drama Sodom and Gomorrah – unfinished.

Hartmann completed a number of fine works, most notably eight symphonies. The first of these, and perhaps emblematic of the difficult genesis of many of his works, is Symphony No. 1, titled "Essay for a requiem" (Versuch eines Requiems). This work began in 1936 as a cantata for alto solo and orchestra, loosely based on a few select poems by Walt Whitman. It soon became known as "Our Life: Symphonic Fragment" (Unser Leben: Symphonisches Fragment) and was intended as a comment on the generally miserable conditions for artists and liberal minded individuals under the early Nazi regime. After the defeat of the Third Reich in World War II, the real victims of the regime had become clear, and the cantata's title was changed to "Symphonic Fragment: Attempt at a Requiem" to honor the millions killed in the Holocaust. Hartmann revised the work in 1954-1955 as his Symphony No. 1, and finally published it in 1956. As this example indicates, Hartmann was a highly self-critical composer and many of his works went through successive stages of revision. He also suppressed most of his substantial orchestral works of the late 1930s and the war years, either allowing them to remain unpublished or, in several cases, reworking them - or portions of them - into the series of numbered symphonies that he produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Perhaps the most frequently-performed of his symphonies are No. 4, for strings, and No. 6; probably his most widely known work, through performances and recordings, is his Concerto funebre for violin and strings, composed at the beginning of World War II and making use of a Hussite chorale and a Russian revolutionary song of 1905.

As a composer, Hartmann attempted a difficult synthesis of many different idioms, including musical expressionism and jazz stylization, into organic symphonic forms in the tradition of Bruckner and Mahler. His early works contain music that is both satirical and politically engaged. But he admired the polyphonic mastery of J.S. Bach, the profound expressive irony of Mahler, the neoclassicism of Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith. He, also in the 1930s, developed close ties with Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály in Hungary, and this is reflected in his own music to some extent. In the 1940s, he began to take an interest in Schoenbergian twelve-tone technique; though he studied with Webern his own idiom was closer to Alban Berg. In the 1950s, Hartmann started to explore the metrical techniques pioneered by Boris Blacher and Elliott Carter. He especially makes use of the forms of three-part Adagio slow movements, Fugue, Variations and Toccata.

Significantly, no major German conductor championed his music following his death: Scherchen, his most noted advocate, died in 1966. Some have suggested that this accelerated the disappearance of Hartmann's music from public view in the years following his death. Conductors who regularly performed Hartmann's music include Rafael Kubelik and Ferdinand Leitner, who also recorded the third and sixth symphonies. More recent champions of works by Hartmann include Ingo Metzmacher and Mariss Jansons.

Henze said of Hartmann's music:

Symphonic architecture was essential for him… as a suitable medium for reflecting the world as he experienced and understood it – as an agonizingly dramatic battle, as contradiction and conflict – in order to be able to achieve self-realization in its dialectic and to portray himself as a man among men, a man of this world, and not out of this world.

The English composer John McCabe wrote his Variations on a Theme of Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1964) in tribute. It uses the opening of Hartmann's Fourth Symphony as its theme. Hans Werner Henze has made a version of Hartmann's Piano Sonata No. 2 for full orchestra. wikipedia