Many composers are known to have perished as a result of the hostilities during World War One, perhaps the most prominent being Magnard and Granados. Some British composers of great promise whose lives were cut short by the same conflict were Ernest Farrar, George Butterworth and Cecil Coles. Luckily some of the music by these three has made it onto disc.
Other than Webern (who was shot by mistake) and Viktor Ullmann (who died in Auschwitz), I can't immediately recollect a similar roll-call from World War Two, but there must have been other composers (especially amongst the unsungs) who were direct casualties of the 1939-45 conflict. Any examples? ???
Erwin Schuloff, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krasa all died in Nazi lagers, after having shared the experience of the Therezin "model" lager.
Decca (when had still a, so to say, cultural policy) dedicated to them a few CDs of the series "Degenerate Music".
There aro also at least Supraphon, Berlin Classics, Arte Nova recordings.
In World War I shoul be remembered the young died German Rudi Stephan (recorded by Chandos, the disappeared Koch and the esoteric label Archiphon).
Veniamin Fleischman (Rothschild's Violin, finished by Shostakovitch); Jehan Alain, killed a dozen Germans before they killed him, he had some of his music with him when he died; Dick Kattenberg, Dutch composer who was killed in the camps along with Leo Smit, every time I have read about Kattenberg, there are superlatives about what music he left, hopefully some will be played. And Hugo Distler committed suicide as a result of being conscripted into the German army, though that's not a battle casualty, if you have heard any of his music you know more and even better would have come from him, fragile soul that he was.
I believe Marcel Tyberg died in Auschwitz.
Morten
And peripheral to the Vietnam war, Philippa Schuyler drowned there in 1967 when a helicopter she was in crashed into the sea. She was a child prodigy pianist and composer and then was a war correspondent, which is why she was in Vietnam and her death was in the course of her assisting with the evacuation of school children in 1967. She composed piano music, Manhattan Nocturne, Sleepy Hollow sketches, Rhapsody of Youth and Nile Fantasy for orchestra. Her parents tried to "engineer" her genius with all kinds of diets and regimens. Sounds like she lived a pretty "irregular" life but traveled extensively and wrote 5 books about her travels. I wonder if I will ever hear any of her work.
There are some intriguing names here - I'd never come across Philippa Schuyler before, but there seems to be a fascinating biography published by OUP USA telling the story of her all-too-brief life -
(http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/images/en_US/covers/large/9780195113938_450.jpg)
OUP USA: "The turbulent life story of a child prodigy who inspired a generation of African-Americans
George Schuyler, a renowned and controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress and granddaughter of slave owners, believed that intermarriage would "invigorate" the races, thereby producing extraordinary offspring. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory, and they hoped she would prove that interracial children represented the final solution to America's race problems.
Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and 40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. Philippa grew up under the adoring and inquisitive eyes of an entire nation and soon became the role model and inspiration for a generation of African-American children. But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happened to the "little Harlem genius." Suffering the double sting of racism and gender bias, Philippa had been rejected by the elite classical music milieu in the United States and forced to find an audience abroad, where she flourished as a world-class performer and composer. She traveled throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia performing for kings, queens, and presidents. By then Philippa had added a second career as an author and foreign correspondent reporting on events around the globe--from Albert Schweitzer's leper colony in Lamberéné to the turbulent Asian theater of the 1960s. She would give a command performance for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium one day, and hide from the Viet Cong among the ancient graves of the Annam kings another.
But behind the scrim of adventure, glamour, and intrigue was an American outcast, a woman constantly searching for home and self. "I am a beauty--but I'm half colored...so I'm always destined to be an outsider," she wrote in her diary. Philippa tried to define herself through love affairs, but found only disappointment and scandal. In a last attempt to reclaim an identity, she began to "pass" as Caucasian. Adopting an Iberian-American heritage, she reinvented herself as Felipa Monterro, an ultra-right conservative who wrote and lectured for the John Birch Society. Her experiment failed, as had her parents' dream of smashing America's racial barriers. But at the age of thirty five, Philippa finally began to embark on a racial catharsis: She was just beginning to find herself when on May 9, 1967, while on an unauthorized mission of mercy, her life was cut short in a helicopter crash over the waters of war-torn Vietnam.
The first authorized biography of Philippa Schuyler, Composition in Black and White draws on previously unpublished letters and diaries to reveal an extraordinary and complex personality. Extensive research and personal interviews from around the world make this book not only the definitive chronicle of Schuyler's restless and haunting life, but also a vivid history of the tumultuous times she lived through, from the Great Depression, through the Civil Rights movement, to the Vietnam war. Talalay has created a highly perceptive and provocative portrait of a fascinating woman."
Apparently, the helicopter was deliberately put into free-fall by the pilot to give his civilian passengers a thrill, but they all got rather more than they bargained for when he completely lost control and crashed into the sea. Schuyler survived the crash but was unable to swim and drowned.
There don't appear to be any recordings of her music, but her papers are at Syracuse University (http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/schuyler_p.htm (http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/schuyler_p.htm)) - the collection includes full scores of Manhattan Nocturne (1945), Nile Fantasia (1946) and Rumpelstiltsken (c.1947).
There is quite a role-call of composers (mostly Jewish, unsurprisingly) who were murdered by the Nazis during WWII - mostly perishing in concentration camps:
Pavel Haas (killed in a gas chamber in Auschwitz, 17 October 1944 (the same day as Krasa and the day before Ullmann))
Gideon Klein (actively killed in Fürstengrube camp, January 1945)
Franz Krasa (killed in a gas chamber in Auschwitz, 17 October 1944 (the same day as Haas and the day before Ullmann))
Ervín Schulhoff (died of tuberculosis in Wülzburg concentration camp, 18 August 1942)
Viktor Ullmann (killed in a gas chamber in Auschwitz, 18 October 1944 (the day after Haas))
One other:
Jehan Alain (killed resisting Nazi occupation of his home town of Le Petit-Puy, 20 June 1940)
Further back in time, British composer Clement Harris (1871-1897) was killed at Pente Pigadia on 23 April 1897 fighting for the Greeks against the Turks. He was a pupil of Clara Schumann and great friend of Siegfried Wagner, whose Symphonic Poem Glück (1922-3) is dedicated to his memory.
Harris's most substantial work, the Symphonic Poem Paradise Lost (1895) and the Festival March were recorded by Marco Polo in 1994 - http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.223660 (http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.223660).
The full score of Paradise Lost is available at IMSLP - http://imslp.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost_%28Harris,_Clement%29 (http://imslp.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost_%28Harris,_Clement%29)
Walter Leigh was killed in action near Tobruk in 1942, dying before he achieved his potential or indeed produced any really substantial scores, although he left an unfinished sketch for a symphony. I've just been listening again to the splendid Lyrita disc (a good conspectus of his music) which includes the charming Harpsichord Concertino -
(http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Sept07/Leigh_srcd289.jpg)
If you like the neo-classical works of Holst from the 1920s, or respond to the spicy-archaicism of Warlock's Capriol Suite and Moeran's Serenade this disc could be well worth a listen.
Leone Sinigaglia (1868-1944) suffered a mortal hearth attack when Nazi police came to arrest him in the hospital where he was a patient.
William Lawes stopped one fighting for the royal cause at the siege of Chester in 1645.
Excellent snippet of info Francis. For the life of me I did not expect the English Civil War to get into this thread.
Being a nosy git, I have had a browse through your website. I think I will have to buy your "Farewell to Hirta", being a bit of a St Kilda buff and having visited. Sounds lovely and I don't think I have ever heard any compositions relating to these Islands.
Regards
Thal
The wonderful Armenian folklorist and composer, Gomitas Vartabed, is a different kind of casualty of war. As described on www.armenianheritage.com:
QuoteAfter the April 24, 1915 massacres of the Armenian people by the Turks, he succumbed to mental and physical anguish and never fully recovered. Komitas lived as if a walking corpse for the next twenty years. The revered holy man died in Paris on October 22, 1935 in a mental hospital.
Edmund von Borck (1906-44) was really a great loss. I know his magnificent Saxophone Concerto op.6, written in 1932 for Sigurd Rascher, actually the first one!
There are more orchestral works and two operas. He hasn't even a wikipedia entry!
BTW, fyrexia uploaded the PC op.20.
apparently Joseph Holbrooke wrote one in or before the 1920s which was performed then, so hardly the first saxophone concerto. and he (Borck) has a Russian Wikipedia entry- translate it into English and German and one has a start in those Wikipedias too. Russian WP (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BA,_%D0%AD%D0%B4%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B4_%D1%84%D0%BE%D0%BD)
I meant the first one written for Rascher. ;)
Noch Rascher? (erm... and now we leave this extended humoresque & return you to the...)
I am not sure if suicide can be part of the thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB7jdbnYa14
Nektarios Chargeishvili, georgian composer. Killed himself, after been persecuted for years for writing "formalist" music during the stalinist era. I would actually blame Khrennikov. He is the boss in all the soviet composer persecution project. Between some victims, might include shostakovich, weinberg, mosolov, roslavets, eiges, popov, shebalin and so much others.
Chargeishvili was among all those, and ended up killing himself.
At least this all happen during war time, thats for sure.
Link above is his symphony. Last piece he ever wrote. Killed himself write after finishing it. I think you can hear some echoes of death in there.
All best,
Tony
well, I suppose it's good to have someone to blame however remotely (Khrennikov to blame for Shostakovich's death? that one is new to me!), unlike in literature and the arts etc. where it's pretty clear who to blame for murderous persecutions (Stalin, etc.) (some but few of which happened to composers in the same period, I gather- and to Weinberg in part at that time - not murderous, but it was a close thing...- not because of his music but because of his family relations.) ... anyway.
I should have mentioned that this victims, i was referring, as victims of being persecuted and sewed. There deaths has nothing to do with khrennikov.
Khrennikov just led them to a harder life durin 1940 to almost 1960.
Tony
I wonder how many how many musical masterpieces, both in manuscript and printed form, were destroyed as a result of the intensive Allied bombing of a number of German cities during World War 2.
What is known is that Leipzig was an important centre for printing music scores and during the first world war many of the plates were melted down and during the second world war even more plates and the original scores were lost through bombing.
How much music was lost forever by the Nazi destruction of the work of Jewish composers? It's frightening to think how close we came to losing most of Korngold's work.
I have a CD and some tapes of some of the surviving music of Viktor Ullmann and have heard music by others (Schulhoff e.g. - his sextet is also in my collection, have heard the quartets, though those are all pre-war; Gideon Klein's excellent string trio) who died in the Shoah. (Have also been curious about composers, some of whom survived the wars, some of whom did not, who followed the official line, were by their lights patriotic, were in some cases rewarded well, depending on the caprice of the dictators at times (caprice seeming to be an essential part of some of these- well, another subject!) - (admittedly Trapp and Hessenberg (1908-1994) lived fairly good and long lives, to choose apparently two cases. Have heard a bit of Hessenberg's chamber music- sounds pretty good to me, in point of fact, though maybe too Hindemith-influenced for this forum. (The first movement of his 4th string quartet in E minor op60 (pub 1958), and only movement of his cello sonata in C op23 (pub 1942), seem to have quite good inspiration and brio...)
Trapp's music I gather is perhaps not so good, but I have not heard it and will wait until I have. I don't know if one should regret that their music's reputation is a casualty, not so much of war, as of their composer's foolishness. Maybe it should be performed anonymously and royalties sent quietly.)
Eric raises an interesting point here. Trapp, Von Schillings et al. could maybe not be described as 'victims', but there is no doubt that their reputations suffered because of the war, even if some of them were allowed to continue their work after 1945. And even though for instance Von Schillings was arguably a nasty piece of work, I cannot help but feel somewhat sorry for those that through their a-political attitude (and therefore their lack of distance to the nazi regime) became the target of harsh criticism: people like Von Klenau (a very talented composer), Graener, Pepping and even Richard Strauss.
But leaving the nazi case (and threats of Godwin's law) aside, can we think of other people that were more indirectly hit by war? Ravel springs to mind, as someone utterly demoralised by the relentlessness of the war machine.
Edmund von Borck, German soldier killed in Italy, have his piano concerto and a saxophone concerto.
http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-08262003-191536/
ignore, missed earlier reference
hrm. the effects of the 1848 revolutions on many people not directly involved in them comes to mind though that's almost entirely a tangential matter... will think about the question myself.
BTW, fyrexia uploaded the PC op.20.
How may I access it, please?
Quote from: Gareth Vaughan on Monday 20 June 2011, 10:37
BTW, fyrexia uploaded the PC op.20.
How may I access it, please?
Sorry, Gareth, I should have mentioned that it is at fyrexia's youtube channel!
Quote from: Gareth Vaughan on Monday 20 June 2011, 10:37
BTW, fyrexia uploaded the PC op.20.
How may I access it, please?
Here are the links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=268K9UnBzTI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=268K9UnBzTI)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE2i1tPC_Wk&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE2i1tPC_Wk&feature=related)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y558mi1_SrU&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y558mi1_SrU&feature=related)
Thank you very much.
Boris Goltz (Борис Григорьевич Гольц, 1913-1942), Russian/Soviet composer, killed in the siege of Leningrad, aged 29. Some of his pieces for solo piano have been recorded, and it seems he wrote some music for Soviet movies. The Russian version of wikipedia also says that he wrote a piano concerto, and that would be of great interest. Also a festival overture, expromptu for variety orchestra, etc. Does anyone know if it has been recorded?
Quote from: jimmattt on Wednesday 04 May 2011, 18:09
Veniamin Fleischman (Rothschild's Violin, finished by Shostakovitch); ...
I have recently acquired a copy of Fleischman's (also transliterated as Fleishmann) one act opera Rothschild's Violin, with the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. It is very enjoyable, and lovers of Shostakovich (who completed the dead composer's work) will not fail to hear his imprint.
Quote from: giles.enders on Sunday 19 June 2011, 14:13
What is known is that Leipzig was an important centre for printing music scores and during the first world war many of the plates were melted down and during the second world war even more plates and the original scores were lost through bombing.
Let us not forget Spyridon Xyndas, composer of the first Greek opera (and useful filler-out for any alphabetical collection, needless to say, were any of his works committed to disc), much of whose music was destroyed in the bombing of Corfu in 1943.
Quote from: Ilja on Sunday 19 June 2011, 22:36
Eric raises an interesting point here. Trapp, Von Schillings et al. could maybe not be described as 'victims', but there is no doubt that their reputations suffered because of the war, even if some of them were allowed to continue their work after 1945. And even though for instance Von Schillings was arguably a nasty piece of work, I cannot help but feel somewhat sorry for those that through their a-political attitude (and therefore their lack of distance to the nazi regime) became the target of harsh criticism: people like Von Klenau (a very talented composer), Graener, Pepping and even Richard Strauss.
But leaving the nazi case (and threats of Godwin's law) aside, can we think of other people that were more indirectly hit by war? Ravel springs to mind, as someone utterly demoralised by the relentlessness of the war machine.
Alex Ross goes into some depth into the Strauss question in
The Rest is Noise. It's a fascinating and detailed read, even though I find myself less condemnatory of Strauss than he is.
He is not a casualty of war composer.
However Szymon Laks spent few years in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp where he became head of the prisoners' orchestra.
His Polish Suite can be found in the Downloads/Polish Music
Re Xyndas: true, there's no reason why Xenakis should have that letter all to himself :)
Quote from: eschiss1 on Friday 10 February 2012, 00:12
Re Xyndas: true, there's no reason why Xenakis should have that letter all to himself :)
Tangentially - see also:
- Haris Xanthoudakis
- Nikos Xanthoulis
- Lorenc Xhuvani
I own something by each of the first two - can't say I like it, but it fills a space ;D
We now return you to your regularly scheduled tragedy...