With one exception, all of the composers in this mix were Jews murdered by the Nazis in World War II. Their names were Pavel Haas, Erwin Schulhoff, Hans Krása, Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein and Zikmund Schul. Five were Czech, one Austrian. They were from middle class or wealthy families, influenced by what young composers were excited by in the 1920s: Bartok, Dada and Surrealism, American jazz (through a distant and oblique lens)… Two were in their twenties and deprived of the chance to develop their potential, while four were men in their forties with fairly large bodies of work performed all over Europe (and, in the case of Schulhoff, America). Three died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz – likely in the same hour if not the same chamber since they all got off the train from Terezin (Theresienstadt in German) together – and that was Haas, Krása and Ullmann. One, Schulhoff, died in the Wülzburg concentration camp in Bavaria; another, Schul, died of illness in Terezin. And the last, the younger Klein, died in the Fürstengrube labor camp a few months after his trainmates at Auschwitz were sent to the gas chambers. (The exception in the playlist is Gorecki, the Polish composer who was born in 1933 and was a child while the Nazis systematically annihilated his country’s Jewish population, and whose third symphony is his memorial to the tragedy of the Holocaust.)
All images by Bedrich Fritta, Terezin inmate and Auschwitz victim
There is nothing ghoulish about this – it is, if anything, life-affirming music to me. It was composed in a cauldron or in prison, but the music on this mixtape is brilliant regardless of its origins and context. These were genius composers who need to be remembered. Thanks to the commitment of record labels (like Toccata Classics), contemporary performers (like the Pavel Haas Quartet) and Youtube contributors, the music of these senselessly slain artists is a lot easier to find in the 21st century than it was in the decades after the war. And thanks to websites like those run by ORT/Music and the Holocaust (holocaustmusic.ort.org) and James Conlon’s OREL Foundation (orelfoundation.org), it is easy to learn about their lives – both sites have well-researched bios on many composers and essays on their profoundly fucked-up times.
It would be disingenuous to say the history behind this story is not part of the point, though. While I have no interest in the psychosis that leads to wanton murder on any scale, whether it be a killer clown with a corpse-lined crawl space or a state-sanctioned genocide machine, I am extremely interested in how a culture with such profound greatness in its past could fall so low, so fast. Each of the composers on here, along with 12 or 13 million innocent people like them, died because the citizens of a powerful, modern nation allowed themselves to be hypnotized by a madman spouting conspiracy fantasies and age-old racist tropes. Hitler emerged from capitalism in freefall, with Germany reeling from a million per cent inflation and global money interests exerting WAY too much pressure for debt payments and reparations. Germany had every right to be pissed. But it had no right to inflict Hitler upon the world.
At any rate, I have long believed that on some kind of metaphysical level appreciating the works of any deceased artist means that artist is still alive in a meaningful sense, and so this mixtape is sort of like my insignificant little way of saying FUCK Hitler.
:00
Concentration Camp Theme
________
:51
Pavel Haas
(b. 21 June 1899 [1941] d. 17 October 1944, Auschwitz)
String Quartet No. 2 “From the Monkey Mountains”, Op. 7 (1925):
I. Landscape (Andante)
Pavel Haas Quartet from Janacek and Haas Quartets (Supraphon, 2006)
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:11:01
Henryck Gorecki
Symphony No. 3, 1st movement
Dawn Upshaw w/ David Zinman: London Sinfonietta (Nonesuch, 1992)
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:25:33
Erwin Schulhoff
(b. 8 June 1894 [June 1941] d. 18 August 1942, Wülzburg )
Cello Sonata (1914): II. Langsam und getragen
Yvonne Timoianu, Cello, & Alexander Preda, Piano
Live recording: Austrian Cultural Forum, April 2014, Rome, Italy
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:30:58
Hans Krása
(b. 30 November 1899 [10 August 1942] d. 17 October 1944, Auschwitz)
Kammermusik for Harpsichord and 7 Instruments (1936), mvt.1
Zuzana Růžičková, harpsichord, & Czech Nonet
from Hans Krasa: Complete Chamber Music (Praga Digitals)
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:46:01
Viktor Ullmann
(b. 1 January 1898 [8 September 1942] d. 18 October 1944, Auschwitz)
Piano Sonata No. 1 (1936), 1st movement.
Jeanne Golan
from Viktor Ullmann: Complete Piano Sonatas (Steinway & Sons, 2012)
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:52:01
Zikmund Schul
(b. 11 January 1916 [30 November 1941] d. 2 June 1944, Terezin)
Two Chassidic Dances for viola and cello (1941-42)
Julia Rebekka Adler, viola, and Thomas Ruge, cello
from Keepsake of the Modern Age (Neos, 2013)
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:57:08
Pavel Haas
Study for String Orchestra (1941-42)
Gerd Albrecht: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
from Musica Rediviva (Orfeo)
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1:05:33
Gideon Klein
(b. 6 December 1919 [December 1941] d. January 1945, Fürstengrube)
Partita (Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello)
arrangement for chamber orchestra by Vojtěch Saudek
Nada Matose Vic: Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto
from Youtube
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1:22:14
Zikmund Schul
“Mogen Ovos”
Renan Koen, soprano; Metehan Pektaş, baritone; Naile Ilgaz, organ
from Youtube
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1:25:08
Pavel Haas
Sinfonia (1940-41) (orchestrated by Zdenek Zouhar)
Israel Yinon: Brno Philharmonic Orchestra
from Haas: Orchestral Works (Koch, 1997)
________
1:51:56
Hans Krása
Passacaglia and Fugue for string trio (1944)
Members of the Kocian Quartet
from Hans Krasa: Complete Chamber Music (Praga Digitals)
________
2:00:55
Viktor Ullmann
Piano Sonata No. 7, 3rd Movement (1944)
Jeanne Golan
from Viktor Ullmann: Complete Piano Sonatas (Steinway & Sons, 2012)
________
2:09:14
Gideon Klein
Lullaby (words by Shalom Charitonov & Emmanuel Harussi) (1943)
Bronislava Tomanová, soprano, with Aneta Majerová, piano
from Lullaby: Music of 20th Century Jewish Composers (Arta)
Concentration Camp 