"One always wonders why when there are bad times, people make such beautiful music," said Prof Robert Rollin, Composition Chair at Dana School of Music, Youngstown State University, USA. Rollin presented a lecture entitled "Music in Hell:Jewish Composers in the Nazi Concentration Camps."
"One always wonders why when there are bad times, people make such beautiful music," said Prof Robert Rollin, Composition Chair at Dana School of Music, Youngstown State University, USA. Rollin presented a lecture entitled "Music in Hell:Jewish Composers in the Nazi Concentration Camps."
The lecture was held at the Eden Grove Blue lecture hall on Tuesday as part of Rhodes’ International Spring Music Festival.
Rollin focused on four early 20th Century composers, Pavel Haas, Hans Krasa, Viktor Ullman and Gideon Klein. All of these composers made music in Terezin, a garrison city built in 1780, northwest of Prague, and later used as a Nazi concentration camp.
Many Jewish artistes (musicians, writers and artists) were sent to Terezin by the Germans. It was here that Hans Krasa composed Brundibar (Bumble Bee), a children’s opera filmed as a piece of Nazi propaganda.
Ironically, after its filming, the entire cast was sent to Auschwitz, the most notorious of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps.
Rollin described Krasa as the most well known of all Terezin musicians whose "lifestyle was truly bohemian". With nights spent at night clubs, Rollin said that this is why Krasa’s "output was small but it was of very high quality".
Rollin spent most of the lecture speaking about Ullman’s work. "I have to watch myself so that I don’t spend too much time on Ullman," said Rollin, "but he’s just so interesting."
Rollin said that in the two years that Ullman spent in Terezin, "he produced the highest quality of all his work which made up a quarter of all his compositions (80)."
In no time at all, the lecture was filled with words like movements, tempo, serenade, all the music jargon that will confuse any layperson.
This was not before Rollin gave the guests a taste of some of the other art produced in Terezin. He started the lecture by showing some of the drawings and posters from the camp.
"There was an actual café and they had performances there," said Rollin about one of the pictures.
Some of the more striking drawings were the ones made by children, "a lot of them are very bright and colourful, which is amazing in itself," Rollin said, referring to the brightly coloured children’s pictures that contrasted their daily experience of living in overcrowding, death caused by starvation and malnutrition.
"I guess when we have it too good we become complacent, right?" Rollin concluded.
