Ilse Weber was a Czech poet who published several books of fairy tales before being interned at Theresienstadt (Terezin) in 1942. There, she began to compose songs, which she sang in the camp’s children’s hospital. Like so many artists who were exploited for propaganda purposes, Weber was later transported to Auschwitz, where she and her son were killed in 1944. It’s said that she sang her lullaby, “Wiegala,” as she voluntarily accompanied children to the gas chamber.
The final lines read:
Viegala, viegala, vill,
Now is the world so still!
No sound disturbs
the sweet calm.
Sleep, my little child,
Sleep too.
Viegala, viegala, vill,
How the world is so still!
Here it is in three different versions:
Sung by Anne-Sophie von Otter
In an arrangement for violin, guitar and double bass
I wrote about this several years ago, but it’s worth revisiting on this Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day):
On October 17, 1994, three of the most promising composers of their generation were snuffed out in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann were all transported from Theresienstadt (Terezin), the Nazi propaganda camp, three days after their final concert on October 14th. With them was the famed conductor Karel Ančerl, who had led the performances.
Immediately upon arrival, Krása, Ullmann and Ančerl were marked for death by Josef Mengele, while Haas was selected to join the forced laborers. Then all at once Haas began to cough. Ančerl was passed over and Haas was sent to be gassed in his place.
In the propaganda film “Theresienstadt,” Haas is shown taking a bow after a performance in Terezin of his “Study for String Orchestra,” a work he had written in the camp. Ančerl can be seen on the podium.
In the same film (subtitled “The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City”), children sing a selection from Krása’s opera “Brundibár.” When filming wrapped, having served their purpose, 18,000 prisoners, Haas and the children included, were deported to Auschwitz. By a large margin, most did not survive.
Haas had been despondent upon his arrival in Terezin. It was fellow composer Gideon Klein who urged him to continue to create. (Klein would die under unclear circumstances in 1945.) Haas wrote at least eight compositions during his internment. His “Study for String Orchestra,” rescued by Ančerl after the liberation of the camp, would become his best known music. Haas was at work on a large-scale symphony at the time of his deportation. The surviving turso of the piece was orchestrated by Zdeněk Zouhar in 1994.
It was Ančerl himself who related the circumstances of Haas’ death to the composer’s brother after the war. Ančerl had lost his own family, his wife and a young son. He himself went on to a bright future. He became artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic in 1950, in which capacity he championed the great Czech composers and helped to foster a distinctly Czech sound in orchestral performance.
After the Warsaw Pact invasion, he left Czechoslovakia for Toronto, Canada, where he served as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra until his death in 1973. None of it would have happened, if not for a quirk of fate.
Thirty years after his death, the music of Haas and his colleagues began to be performed with much more frequency. Much of it is now available in recordings. Listening to it, one can’t help but marvel at the will to create and to survive, even under the most horrific of circumstances, and lament at how history, musical and otherwise, might have been very different had those interned been allowed to live out their natural lives.
Clips from “Theriesenstadt,” featuring a performance of “Brundibár,” particularly affecting when we realize that few of the children survived:
Haas’ “Study for String Orchestra:”
PHOTO: Pavel Haas, inadvertent savior of Karel Ančerl, takes his final bow
Even under the most unspeakable circumstances, he continued to be Viktor.
Viktor Ullmann was one of the best-known composers to be interned in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the “model camp” set up by the Nazis to deceive the foreign press and the International Red Cross.
There, concert orchestras, chamber groups and jazz ensembles were formed. Operas were staged, and the Verdi Requiem was mounted no less than fourteen times. At Terezin, composers continued to create, until deportation to Auschwitz.
Ullmann wrote in 1944, “…that musically I have been challenged not hindered by Theriesenstadt, that we did not just sit by Babylon’s rivers bewailing our fate, and that our will to create culture was as strong as our will to live.”
We’ll be listening to a cross-section of Ullmann’s music written in the camp, including a piano sonata (performed by Terezin survivor Edith Kraus, who died in 2013 at the age of 100), a concert overture and a song cycle; also, a piano concerto written shortly before his arrest, a period of hardship for the composer, as he began to be stripped of his rights and his options to make a living. He never heard the concerto performed in his lifetime. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944.
Ironically, most of his unpublished works dating from before his internment are lost. It is his music written at Terezin, for the most part, which survives. The music written during his confinement, then, becomes a metaphor for the indomitable spirit of the artist.
The composer lives on through his works, on “Ullmann Victorious.” You can hear it tonight at 10 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network or at wwfm.org.
To enhance your appreciation of Ullmann’s “Der Mensch und sein Tag” (“Man and His Day”), I am posting English translations of the aphoristic texts below, so that they may be read while listening to the music.
“DER MENSCH UND SEIN TAG” (MAN AND HIS DAY), Op. 47
12 Portraits by Hans-Günter Adler
WALK INTO MORNING
Sight. Hands in front of eyebrows
and maternal light. Meadowland.
A blade of grass. A step. Dew on the flowers.
SONG
So much. So much and still more.
A great ocean, surging and pounding –
flutes lightly, horns heavily.
HOME
In the ground, the cool ground. So colourful.
Billowing fields and meadows around.
In the ground – hidden heart and mouth.
TO THE BELOVED
With you, in smiles and tears.
Nearness of hand and mouth. Longing
fades. With you no blind fancy.
FLOWERS
Inward, buried deep and warm.
Breath – singing to life.
Bright goblets, lips, tongues.
IN THE PARLOUR
Tightly pressed to one another.
Planted with care and trouble.
Animate and inanimate. Mute and loud.
THE NEIGHBOUR
Help is good. Hand in hand.
Door to door and wall to wall:
quite united. Bond and band.
PRAYERS
Scattered in the chalice of piety
ripe corn offered
to the gladdened protector and creator.
IN THE FOREST
Dappled, close and far and scent.
The sun dreams, the air slumbers.
Crepitation. Calcification. Trees. Scent.
FADE
Down, down. The bell tolls.
Clouds glow. Evening glimmers.
Down, down. The moon-breath shimmers.
NIGHT
Come, gentle sleep! Come, sweet night!
The ground relaxes in muted glory.
Lone thoughts sink to earth.
SILENCE
Stillness. Silence. Looking and watching.
Tranquil in blessed reflection.
Sleep before the divine.
It was on this date in 1944 that three of the most promising composers of their generation were snuffed out in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann were all transported from Theresienstadt (Terezin), the Nazi propaganda camp, three days after their final concert on October 14. With them was the famed conductor Karel Ančerl, who had led the performances.
Immediately upon arrival, Krása, Ullmann and Ančerl were marked for death by Josef Mengele, while Haas was selected to join the forced laborers. Then all at once Haas began to cough. Ančerl was passed over and Haas was sent to be gassed in his place.
In the propaganda film “Theresienstadt,” Haas is shown taking a bow after a performance in Terezin of his “Study for String Orchestra,” a work he had written in the camp. Ančerl can be seen on the podium.
In the same film, children sing a selection from Krása’s opera “Brundibár.” When filming wrapped, having served their purpose, 18,000 prisoners, Haas and the children included, were deported to Auschwitz. By a large margin, most did not survive.
Haas had been despondent upon his arrival in Terezin. It was fellow composer Gideon Klein who urged him to continue to create. (Klein would die under unclear circumstances in 1945.) Haas wrote at least eight compositions during his internment. His “Study for String Orchestra,” rescued by Ančerl after the liberation of the camp, would become his best known music. Haas was at work on a large-scale symphony at the time of his deportation. The surviving turso of the piece was orchestrated by Zdeněk Zouhar in 1994.
It was Ančerl himself who related the circumstances of Haas’ death to the composer’s brother after the war. Ančerl had lost his own family, his wife and a young son. He himself went on to a bright future. He became artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic in 1950, in which capacity he championed the great Czech composers and helped to foster a distinctly Czech sound in orchestral performance.
After the Warsaw Pact invasion, he left Czechoslovakia for Toronto, Canada, where he served as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra until his death in 1973. None of it would have happened, if not for a quirk of fate.
Thirty years after his death, the music of Haas and his colleagues began to be performed with much more frequency. Much of it is now available in recordings. Listening to it, one can’t help but marvel at the will to create and to survive, even under the most horrific of circumstances, and lament at how history, musical and otherwise, might have been very different had those interned been allowed to live out their natural lives.
Here’s a clip of “Brundibár,” particularly affecting when we realize that few of the children survived:
Also, Haas’ “Study for String Orchestra”:
PHOTO: Pavel Haas, inadvertent savior of Karel Ančerl, takes his final bow
