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KTM 439 THE COMPOSERS OF TEREZÍN theme Hello, welcome to Keys To Music on ABC Classic FM. I'm Graham Abbott. I am an inveterate people-watcher. Maybe I'm just creepy and stare at people, but I like to think of myself as an observer of humankind, especially as far as people's interaction with music is concerned. For example, I am fascinated by the obvious need people have for some sort of music in their lives. The most obvious manifestation of this can be seen walking down any street or sitting in any form of public transport; it seems as if most people have music playing on some sort of portable device pumping it into their heads via earpieces or headphones. People walk with music, jog with music, shop with music, work with music...they need music. Is it just to block out the noise of the world at large? Or is it because music makes them feel better? Who can say? Add to this the ubiquitous muzak we can't escape in public places like shops and restaurants - plus the fact that music is indispensible to television, movies, theatre, even computer games - and I can't help but think that we humans are hardwired to not only like music, but to actually need it. Some years ago I presented a Keys To Music program which looked at the important work music therapists do with people in need, be they ill, disabled or grieving. We seem to find music especially necessary when life is under threat. Whether it's just maintaining something familiar from "before" when life was more predictable, or whether we find in the beauty and power of music something which gives us strength to face adversity, time and again we know of occasions when music has kept us going. The obscenity of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other minorities in the 1930s and 40s is well-known and well-documented. It constitutes one of the blackest chapters in human history, one which should never be forgotten. Amid all the stories of courage that this period has brought to history, I want to focus on one which involves music and specifically the work of five composers under horrific circumstances. It also shows another example of humanity's need for music as an anchor and as therapy in times which defy adequate description. Klein Duo for Violin and Cello: 2nd movt Praga Digitals 250 224 C17 (establish then continue under the following) The fortress of Terezín was built in the 1780s by the Austrian Emperor Joseph II in what is now the north-west corner of the Czech Republic. It was built as part of an unrealised plan to construct a large series of forts and named after the Emperor's mother, Maria Theresa. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the fort was used as a military barracks and prison. In 1940 the Gestapo took control of Terezín. By the end of the following year the walled town had become a concentration camp for Jews. It was not a death camp, in the sense Auschwitz and Treblinka were, but it was used as a holding camp, a ghetto, for thousands of Jews before they were sent east to the death camps and - for most of them - certain murder. But this is not to say that Terezín was in any way a pleasant place for those incarcerated there. The barracks of the old fort were designed to house 7,000 troops. Under the Nazis something like 60- or 70,000 people were crammed into this place. The Nazis presented Terezín (known in German as Theresienstadt) to the outside world as a model settlement, supposedly designed to protect Jews from the ravages of the war. In reality it was a place of hunger, sickness and sadistic treatment of those forced to stay there. More than 30,000 people died at Terezín as a result of the appalling conditions and lack of food; 16,000 died there in 1942 alone. Thousands more were transported east to be murdered in places like Auschwitz after being held in Terezín. 1 music up, play to end of track The abrupt end of that music is symbolic of the countless lives cut short by the horror of Terezín. It was composed by Gideon Klein, a movement from his Duo for Violin and Cello, composed between 1938 and 1940. The vast majority of the Jews held in Terezín were Czech, and those held in the ghetto included the cream of Czechoslovakia's intellectual and artistic elite. Skilled exponents from across the arts were held there, but a high proportion of the inmates were musicians. Initially the Nazis banned instruments in Terezín but many were smuggled in by those forced to be there. Eventually the Nazis allowed music to be performed and before long a thriving cultural life sprang up in the midst of this appalling place. Music was not only performed but created in Terezín; there were orchestras, chamber groups, choirs and theatrical performances. Those for whom music had been an indispensible part of their lives in the real world couldn't face what passed for life in Terezín without music. It was a need which was unstoppable. The cultural life in Terezín also suited the Nazis' desire to use the ghetto for propaganda purposes, in their attempt to show the place as an idyllic refuge for Jews. Gideon Klein was born in 1919 and is the youngest of the composers covered in this program. He was a prize-winning student at the Prague Conservatory before the Nazi occupation forced him to end his studies. Nazis laws against Jews meant he couldn't work as a pianist, and in December 1941 he was sent to Terezín; he was 22. In the three years he was in Terezín, Klein found himself in the presence of a large number of highly talented and skilled artists and intellectuals. For him, at an artistic level, the experience stimulated him to compose. He was appointed to organise chamber music in the camp, and he performed often as a pianist in concerts, sometimes in chamber works, sometimes giving solo recitals. The music Klein composed in Terezín included his Two Madrigals, for five unaccompanied voices setting two very different texts, one in German by Hölderlin, the other in French by Villon. This is the Hölderlin setting, entitled The Agreeable Things of the World. Klein Two Madrigals: Das Angenehme Dieser Welt Koch 3-7230-2 C9 Gideon Klein's most famous work composed in Terezín is his String Trio, written in September and October of 1944. It is an important work, synthesising his Expressionist side (the style of Schoenberg and Berg) with his Czech side (as inspired by the music of Janáček). This is the trio's final movement. Klein String Trio: 3rd movt Praga Digitals 250 224 C3 Nine days after completing the trio, Klein was transported to Auschwitz, and then to Fürstengrube, where he was murdered three months later, aged 25. Pavel Haas was another composer held at Terezín. He was born in Brno in 1899, making him twenty years older than Gideon Klein. Haas studied at the Brno Conservatoire and eventually became a student of Janáček. Before the war Haas had a flourishing career, writing major orchestral works (including symphonies), as well as choral works, songs, chamber music and music for theatre and cinema. His opera, The Charlatan, was premiered in Brno in 1938 to huge acclaim. In 1941 Haas was deported to Terezín. Not long before his arrest he divorced his wife so that she and their daughter would not suffer a similar fate. While in the camp, Haas became seriously depressed, and it was Gideon Klein who encouraged him to compose again. Very little of Haas's music from Terezín has survived, but among the little which has are the Four Songs on Chinese Poetry. These songs, for baritone and piano, set Czech translations of Chinese poetry from the 7th to 9th century. These are the first two songs from the set. The first begins, "Your 2 homeland is there, / far away in the distance, / you should go home, / my errant heart." The second describes a minstrel sitting alone in a bamboo grove quietly playing his lute. Haas Four Songs on Chinese Poetry: I heard the wild geese; In the bamboo grove DG 477 6546 C18+19 One of the many other musicians held at Terezín was the Czech conductor Karel Ančerl. Ančerl was not only involved in the musical activities of Terezín but was also responsible for much of the music composed there surviving at all. Ančerl managed to survive the horrors of the Holocaust and after the war he returned to Terezín and recovered much of the discarded musical materials, thereby saving them for posterity. Music by Pavel Haas, including his Study for String Orchestra, was among the music he saved from oblivion. Haas's Study for String Orchestra was included in a Nazi propaganda film about Terezín and Haas himself can be seen in the fragments of the film which survive, taking a bow after Ančerl has conducted a performance of the piece. The film was officially called Terezín: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement but it is more popularly called The Führer Gives the Jews a City. It was an attempt to show the outside world that Terezín was a cultured haven for the mostly Czech Jews who lived there. Even a delegation from the Red Cross, which visited Terezín at the insistence of the Danish government, was fooled by the facade. The inmates were coerced into taking part in the film, of which more a little later. After the film had been made, some 18,000 prisoners were sent from Terezín to Auschwitz-Burkenau to be murdered in the gas chambers, Haas and Ančerl among them. Ančerl later told the story that at Auschwitz, Joseph Mengele was about to send him to the gas chamber, but Haas happened at that moment to cough. Mengele then decided to send Haas to die instead. Even though Ančerl himself survived Auschwitz, his wife and young son (who was born in Terezín) died there. After the war Ančerl achieved great distinction as one of the 20th century's finest conductors, most notably during his tenure as chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. He died in 1973. Krása Brundibár: Serenade Koch 3-7151-2 H1 C24 (1'02) Hans Krása was another composer interred at Terezín. Krása was the same age as Haas, and he studied in Prague. After graduating he worked in opera, during which time he met and was strongly influenced by the composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky. In the late 20s Krása went to Berlin and made strong connections there with French music (mainly through Albert Roussel and the members of Les Six) as well as major German and Austrian composers of the period. He became famous as a composer of orchestral music, songs and opera before the war. The last work Krása completed before being sent to Terezín was a children's opera called Brundibár. He was sent to Terezín in August 1942 and while in the camp arranged for Brundibár to be performed (in a scaled-down version) some 55 times by the children of the camp. Brundibár featured in the infamous propaganda film I referred to earlier. The nasty hurdy-gurdy man of the title was immediately seen by the prisoners of Terezín as being a symbol of Hitler, but the stark truth was that as the performances went on in the ghetto, new children had to be constantly brought in and taught the parts of those who were transported to the death camps. The Terezín version of Brundibár was recorded in 1996 and a moment ago we heard the short entr'acte (called Serenade) which Krása wrote for the Terezín performances. This is the opera's conclusion, where the children sing of their triumph over the nasty Brundibár. Krása Brundibár: Act Two, Scenes 5 and 6 Koch 3-7151-2 H1 C29+30 3 Virtually all the children involved in the filming of that finale for the propaganda film were sent to Auschwitz as soon as the filming was completed. Of all the composers interred in Terezín, perhaps the best-known today is Viktor Ullmann, who is mostly remembered for a single work, a one-act musical play called Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis). Ullmann was a year older than Haas and Krása and his family background gave him an unusual mixture of affiliations: he was a German-speaking Czech Jew whose family was Catholic. He was an excellent pianist but his main career focus was composition. Before and after the first world war he studied with Schoenberg, but in 1919 he left Vienna, where he had been based, and went to Prague to study with Zemlinsky. He worked as a conductor at the New German Theatre in Prague and he worked there, under Zemlinsky, until 1927. The following season he was appointed to head another opera company in Prague but his repertoire choices (including works by Richard Strauss and Krenek) were regarded as too modern for the company and he was dismissed. Throughout the 20s and 30s Ullmann developed a major reputation as a composer in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. His works were very modern for their time - he even enrolled in a class in quarter-tone techniques in Prague in the mid-30s - and by the early 40s he had a considerable number of works to his credit, up to 41 opus numbers. These included orchestral works, chamber music, piano works and songs. Apart from a few copies of a few of these works, most of them are now lost. Ullmann was deported to Terezín in September 1942. He became involved in the many musical activities of the ghetto and one statement by him summarises the place of music in the lives of those imprisoned there: "By no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon. Our endeavour with respect to the arts was commensurate with our will to live". Most of Ullmann's music composed in Terezín has survived and this too comprises a considerable body of work: the last three piano sonatas, the third string quartet, many songs, and other theatre pieces in addition to The Emperor of Atlantis. This is part of the third string quartet, composed around the start of 1943. Ullmann String Quartet No 3: Finale and Coda Koch 3-7109-2H1 C19 The Emperor of Atlantis, Ullmann's most famous work, was written in Terezín between the middle of 1943 and January 1944. It was scheduled for performance in the Autumn of 1944, conducted by another notable prisoner of Terezín, the conductor Rafael Schächter. The SS commander, though, heard some of the rehearsals and noticed the parallels between the character of the Emperor and Hitler, so the performance was prohibited. Peter Kien's libretto for the piece is a very clear allegory on the nature of fascism and the low value it places on human life, so it's hardly surprising that the piece was never performed at Terezín. This is an intermezzo which introduces the second scene, called Totentanz, or "dance of death". Ullmann Der Kaiser von Atlantis: Scene 2 Intermezzo (Totentanz) Decca 440 854-2 C8 The work's subtitle is The Refusal of Death, and Death himself is one of the characters in the piece. The plot revolves around the refusal of Death to be involved in the Emperor's war and the resultant chaos this brings, when people are sick or wounded but cannot die. The Emperor begs Death to return, which he agrees to do on condition that the Emperor himself will be the first to experience the new reign of death. Realising it is the only hope for mankind, the Emperor allows himself to be led away. This is how the piece ends, with the Emperor's aria preparing for death and the ensemble welcoming death back into their lives. The tune Ullmann used as the basis for the final ensemble is the Lutheran hymn, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. 4 Ullmann Der Kaiser von Atlantis: Conclusion Decca 440 854-2 C19+20 On 16 October 1944, shortly after the banning of The Emperor of Atlantis, Viktor Ullmann was transported to Auschwitz. He died in the gas chambers a couple of days later. The Emperor of Atlantis had to wait more than 30 years for its first performance, receiving its premiere in Amsterdam in 1975. Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann were four gifted composers whose lives were cut short by unspeakable bigotry and cruelty. They were but four of the countless musicians, artists, writers, intellectuals and all manner of skilled and highly educated people in Terezín who were murdered, in addition to thousands and thousands of ordinary men, women and children. The loss to European art, European culture, European learning and European life is incalculable. That we have what we have and know what we know of these men is little short of miraculous. Better perhaps to reflect on their achievements, rather than what might have been. There are a number of different responses we might have to the story of the composers of Terezín. The most common, and most understandable, is admiration at the ways these people were able to make music under the direst and most horrible of circumstances. It is a moving example of courage and determination. But if I might return to my comments at the start of the program, the music composed and performed at Terezín shows us yet again that we humans need music in our lives and that it does us good to have it in our lives. While it's nice to say that ironing or traffic or peeling potatoes are all easier when you have music on in the background, such an equation can cheapen the value of music by demoting music to little more than a tranquilliser, a drug, which gets us through somehow. Music can be that but there's so much more to it. Music isn't just a shield, it's a weapon. It's not just medication, it's also food and drink. The inmates of Terezín used music as a means of fighting their oppressors, of maintaining their dignity, their humanity, and of providing enrichment for their minds when they were in all other ways impoverished. This is a fact which can apply to us and take our response to the story of Terezín beyond admiration and into practical experience. One Terezín prisoner, the pianist Alice Hertz Sommer, in 2010 (at the age of 106) looked back on her time there. She said, "Music is mankind's greatest miracle. From the very first note, one is transported into a higher, other world, and that is how it was when we played or listened in the ghetto". Music offers us a mental enrichment which helps us live beyond the present, to be greater than our circumstances, to actually be better people. I have long believed this and the more I live in a world full of music the more I experience it in my own life. I have never experienced anything remotely approaching what the inmates of Terezín experienced - I pray the universe none of us ever do - but in whatever circumstances in which we find ourselves, we do well to remember that a mind enriched by music is a mind which inhabits a better world. Maybe that can be the lesson we all learn from Terezín. I said at the top of the program that I wanted to mention five composers who were imprisoned at Terezín, and indeed, there is one more, someone who slightly stands apart from the four composers I've already mentioned. Ilse Weber was a remarkable woman, born in 1901. She was a poet and noted children's author. She was also a skilled performer on many instruments but only ever regarded herself as an amateur musician. When her husband Willi Weber was deported to Terezín she volunteered to go with him, taking their young son with her. At Terezín Ilse Weber worked as a night nurse in the children's hospital, working as best should could to look after sick children without any medicines, which were forbidden to Jewish patients of any age. She wrote some 60 poems for her young patients and set many of them to music. This is one of them, Farewell, my friend! 5 I Weber Ade, Kamerad! DG 477 6546 C4 In October 1944 Willi Weber was deported to Auschwitz and Ilse volunteered to go with him with their son, because she didn't want to break up the family. Ilse and her son were sent to their deaths as soon as they arrived; Willi Weber survived another 30 years. Weber's most famous song is Wiegala, known in English as "Lullaby". It has been recorded many times, but perhaps none so simply and movingly as the version with guitar sung by Anne Sofie von Otter with which we'll end this program. Its simple nobility speaks for itself. Eyewitnesses reported that Ilse Weber sang this song to children from Terezín as they entered the gas chamber together. Technical production for Keys To Music is by Michael Rogers and my name's Graham Abbott. I Weber Wiegala (Lullaby) DG 477 6546 C9 6