voicing music by composers lost in the Holocaust
As the pandemic recedes, their stories poignantly speak to us about the life-affirming value of music.
Viktor Ullmann at the 50th birthday party of his mentor, Arnold Schönberg
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Viktor Ullmann was born in 1898 in Teschen and became a rising star in the circle of Arnold Schönberg, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Alban Berg: he was among the most gifted composers of the Second Viennese school of classical music. By September 8, 1942, when Ullmann was deported to Terezín, his oeuvre had reached forty-one opus numbers plus three piano sonatas, song cycles on texts by various poets, operas, and the piano concerto Op. 25, finished in December 1939, nine months after German troops entered Prague. In Terezín, he was a composer, critic, accompanist, and organizer of contemporary concerts. He was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on October 18, 1944.
Ullmann's 26 concert critiques and other writings—newly translated by Mark Ludwig with the help of Terezín survivors—are the heart of Our Will to Live, the new TMF/Steidl Verlag volume we will launch at our Gala. Hear music by Ullmann here. |
Hans Krása
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Hans Krása was born in Prague in 1899 to Jewish parents. His primary influences were Mahler, Schönberg, Zemlinsky, and also the group of French composers known as Les Six. His debut as a composer came with his acclaimed Four Orchestral Songs Op. 1, followed by a string quartet, a set of songs, and his Symphonie für kleines Orchester, performed in Zurich, Paris, and Boston. His major achievement was the opera Verlobung im Traum (Betrothal in a Dream), first performed in Prague in 1933 under Georg Szell and awarded the Czechoslovak State Prize. Brundibár, his children's opera based on a play by Aristophanes, was the last work Krása completed before he was arrested by the Nazis on August 10, 1942. Krása was sent to Terezín, where he reworked Brundibár with the available cast, who performed it 55 times, with excerpts featured in the infamous propaganda film made for the Red Cross in 1944. Krása was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on October 17, 1944.
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Erwin Schulhoff with his son, Petr, before his transport to Terezín
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Erwin Schulhoff was born in June 1894 in Prague to German-Jewish parents. He studied in Prague, Vienna, Leipzig, and Cologne, where his teachers included Claude Debussy and Max Reger. He was in the first generation of classical composers to find inspiration in jazz and the avant-garde Dada movement. He cherished music as "the complete escape from imperialistic tonality and rhythm, the climb to an ecstatic change for the better." Impressionism, late German Romanticism, Czech and Slavic folk music, Expressionism, and even jazz can all be discerned in his work. Schulhoff was blacklisted as a degenerate artist by the Nazis, and he died of tuberculosis in the Wülsburg Concentration Camp on August 18, 1942. Listen to some of his music here.
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Robert Dauber
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Robert Dauber was born in Vienna in 1922. His father was the famous Jewish violinist Dol Dauber from Bukovina, and his mother was a Bohemian German from Brno. The family moved to Prague in 1936, and Robert was sent to Terezín on August 8, 1942. He performed the cello part in camp performances of Krása's opera Brundibár. Dauber was transported to Dachau on 28 September 1944 and was killed there on March 24, 1945.
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