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 sketch by Petr Kien |
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Viktor Ullmann“Wir suchen vergessnen Engelgesang” “We search for the forgotten song of angels” |
Fundacja Instytut Viktora Ullmanna Cieszyn & Viktor Ullmann Foundation
7 Roma Read Close, London SW15 4AZ UK
E-mail: office@viktorullmann.freeserve.co.uk Tel: +44(0) 20 8785 4772
AIMS
· To honour and remember the composer Viktor Ullmann (Teschen 1898 - Auschwitz 1944) in the place of his birth and to be an ambassador for his life and works
· To research the remnants and descendants of the Jewish Community in Cieszyn Silesia, making an honourable and living memorial to them
HONORARY VICE PRESIDENTS
Wojciech Kilar
Sir John Tavener
HONORARY PATRONS
Pierre Boulez
George Benjamin
Alfred Brendel
Daniel Barenboim
James Gibb
Eva Fox Gal
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Jacqueline Cole
COMMITTEE
Professor Yehuda Bauer
Director of Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem, Israel
Elena Makarova
Artist and Writer living in Jerusalem, Israel
Edith Kraus
Concert Pianist and friend of Viktor Ullmann living in Jerusalem, Israel
Dr David Bloch
Professor of Musicology, Tel Aviv University and Director of the Terezin Music Project, Israel
Yehezkel Braun
Professor Emeritus Tel-Aviv University Israel
Yonat Klar
Director - Beit Terezin, Israel
Paul Aron Sandfort
Author, Composer, and Opera Director living in Copenhagen
Mgr Hanus Weber
TV Producer, Sweden
Dr Christian Meyer
Director of the Schoenberg Institute, Vienna
Israel Yinon
Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, Graz Symphony Orchestra, Austria
Dr Ales Brezina
Director of the Bohuslav Martinu Institute, Prague
Dr. Vojtech Blodig
Deputy Director Památník Terezín Museum, Czech Republic
Gregorij von Leïtis
Artistic Director Elysium - Between Two Continents New York & Elysium Festival Bernried Germany
Michael Wiener
Lawyer & Musician living in Trier, Germany
Dr Andreas Krause
Editor in Chief, Schott's International Music Publishers, Mainz Germany
Peter Sarkar
Musica Reanimata, Berlin, Germany
Ilona Ziok
Film Director living in Berlin, Germany
Volker Ahmels
Director of the Conservatory Schwerin/Chairman Jeunesses Musicales Mecklenburg Vorpommern e.V.
Judith Adler
Daughter of Anna Wottitz, living in Switzerland
Arnost Lustig
Writer living in Washington DC USA
Renata Karpinska M. Sc.
Head of Promotion and Information Office, Cieszyn Municipality
Bogdan Wojciech Ficek D. Sc.
Mayor of Cieszyn
Mgr Halina Szymura
TV Broadcasting Chief, Krakow Poland
Dr Andre Laks
Philosopher and Writer, Professor of Ancient Philosophy, Charles de Gaulle University, Lille France
Clive M Marks FCA
Living in London UK
Alice Herz Sommer
Concert Pianist and friend of Franz Kafka and Viktor Ullmann, living in London UK
Ben Barkow
Director Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library, Ltd, London UK
Stephen Threlfall GRNCM Hon ARAM FRSA
Director of Music, Chethams School of Music, Long Millgate, Manchester, M3 1SB UK
Sonja Linden
Playright and Writer- in- Residence Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, London UK
Sister Margaret Shepherd nds BA MTh
Director The Council for Christians and Jews, London UK
Viktor Ullmann
“Wir suchen vergessnen Engelgesang” “We search for the forgotten song of angels”
composer, pianist, conductor and music critic was born on the 1st of January in Teschen, now Cieszyn Poland, 1898. An Austrian of Jewish descent and the son of an army officer of the Austrian Imperial Army posted in Teschen, Viktor Josef Ullmann was baptised on the 27th January 1898 into the Catholic Church of St Mary Magdalene, Dominkan Square, Cieszyn. In 1909, the Ullmann family moved to Vienna, where Viktor Ullmann received his education and studying music theory with Dr Josef Pohlaneur. After military service in World War 1, and studies to be a Lawyer like his father Maximillian Jerzy Ullmann, while a student of piano under Edward Steuermann, Viktor Ullmann, no doubt influenced by his experiences, decided to leave the Catholic Church in 1919. He continued his musical education under the guidance of Arnold Schoenberg, who in turn recommended him to Zemlinsky. In 1920 the latter appointed him repetiteur at the German Theatre in Prague, where he was involved in various rare and historic opera productions. For example in the preparation of chorus and singers for Zemlinsky’s 1923 staging of Richard von Heuberger’s ‘Der Opernball’ - an operetta which received its premiere in the year of Ullmann’s birth.
Ullmann subsequently became musical director at Usti nad Labem (Aussig) in 1927, but left his post after a year. Though he had managed to stage an impressive repertoire, including operas by Richard Strauss and Krenek, nevertheless Ullmann’s ambitions were deemed to be rather too progressive for the local audience at that time and possibly his chosen language - German - keenly felt as inappropriate for the perhaps parochial atmosphere of Usti nad Labem.
As a committed and genuine seeker of truth, with the soul of a poet and possessed of a fine intellect - Ullmann was both a Greek and Latin Scholar, and as a man of ‘faith’ drawn sincerely to the writings of Rudolf Steiner, his artistic life could function well along parallel lines, and his loyalty to the Anthroposophical Society, led him to take upon himself in trust, the role of bookshop owner of ‘Novalis’ in Stuttgart (1930-1931). Having inherited bad debts from the previous manager of ‘Novalis’Ullmann returned to Prague because of bankruptcy and after the Nazi acquisition of power, though Steiner’s philosophy left an indelible impression upon his first opera ‘Der Sturz des Antichrist’(The Fall of the Antichrist 1935) and his subsequent writings, literary and musical. He was also a gifted and spirited music critic who has left a profound legacy of philosophical thought, reflections, observations, concert reviews, letters and verse diaries for example ; - ‘Der fremde Passagier, Ein Tagebuch in Versen’ (Prague 1938-1941) “…Was wollen Sie hier?”” Ich bin, zu dienen, IhrMitpassagier”. “Ich dachte, dass ich der einzige sie!” “ Ein kleiner Irrtum, der nunvorbei”… (Ibsen, Peer Gynt).
In the 1930’s Ullmann, living in Prague studied composition with Alois Haba, who was also a fellow anthroposophist, however Ullmann did not adopt any of the latter’s micro-tonal technique. During his lifetime, Ullmann was never able to get the backing of a music publisher, though he wrote some forty compositions, before the Second World War including three operas, two string quartets, four piano sonatas, various orchestral works and songs for voice and piano. There is also his celebrated ‘Five Variations and Doublefuge on a Theme of Arnold Schoenberg’for solo piano Opus 3a 1925/29 (and his Opus 3a reworked into ‘Nine Variations and Doublefuge on aTheme of Arnold Schoenberg’1935) which won for Viktor Ullmann the prestigious composition prize of the Emil Hertzka Foundation in 1936, the same work which he had also very successfully transcribed for string quartet, and orchestra. Sadly, some of his other works are lost, for example his opera based on Henryk Ibsen’s Peer Gynt; his Symfonia Fantasyczna for orchestra inspired by Felix Braun’s ‘Tantalos’ and a theme of which is later taken up in Ullmann’s opera ‘Der Kaiser von Atlantis’and an orchestral work under the guidance of Alois Haba, his “Symphonische Messe zurEhren des Erzengels Michael Opus 13, which he completed in 1936. By this time his relationship with the anthroposophical society was in difficulties. Subsequently Ullmann decided to move on from continuing to engage with such a committed anthroposophical perspective, and was eventually reaccepted into the Catholic Church in Austria on May 11th 1940.
In the years before his deportation to Theresienstadt (1937-1942) Viktor Ullmann suffered depression, which resulted in his hospitalisation. His suffering was further compounded by the loss of his parents. To add to his bereavements, he was forced to part with two of his youngest children, who he never saw again, after they were sent on one of the final Kindertransports to the United Kingdom via Sweden. All this in an increasingly hostile and dangerous climate, with no real chance for Viktor Ullmann to find a safe haven, and all escape routes were made impossible by human indifference and officialdom. This was before he was transported to Theresienstadt on the 8th of September 1942 from Prague, and upon arrival, forced to present himself and his family at the newly inaugurated crematorium in Terezin, travelling on foot with 1000 displaced persons from the nearest railway station, Bohusovice, two kilometres south.
In Theresienstadt, Ullmann was soon given the task of co organising with the Czech composer Hans Krasa (1899-1944), the so called ‘permitted ‘ leisure activities within the ghetto, which had been initiated by the Roumanian composer Raphael Schaecter (1905-1944), taking an active part in the musical life which flourished, from within the most appalling conditions that prevailed for everyone. He produced works for which he is best remembered - several song cycles, three piano sonatas, a string quartet, the symphonic poem ‘Don Quixote Dances a Fandango’ which was to be the overture to an opera of that name in 1943. He was preparing the libretto for an opera based on the life of St Joan of Arc, and of course there is his masterpiece and perhaps one of his finest works - ‘Die Weise von Liebe und Tod’ des Cornets ChristopheRilke for Narrator and Piano/Orchestra completed in July 1944, which Raphael Schaecter premiered in Terezin at the piano. On the title page, Ullmann transcribed a dedication to his third wife, Elizabeth: “For my Elly’s birthday, she ‘goes along’ with the yearsof this century. 27.9.1944.” At the bottom of the manuscript title page is written: Theresienstadt Juli 1944.
Ullmann’s last work, written on scraps of lined paper, was composed and dedicated to three of his four children, Max. Jean and Felicia. There are five movements and the work was completed on 22nd of August 1944. (The youngest child, Pavel Ullmann was born in Prague on the 21st of November 1940 and he died on the 14th of December 1943 in the Terezin ghetto; Max - Maximillian Rudolf, born in 1932, did not survive and perished in Auschwitz 1944) The Seventh Sonata ; Allegro; Alla Marcia, ben misurato; Adagio, ma con moto;Allegretto grazioso; Variationen und Fuge uber ein hebräisches Volkslied, draws its inspiration from Ullmann’s most personal references, and is full of autobiographical musical quotations, for example from Gustav Mahler’s ‘Song of the Wayfarer’ and Richard von Heuberger’s ‘DerOpernball’. In the grotesque ‘allegretto grazioso,’the Scherzo and Trioof Ullmann’s Seventh Sonata, ‘Der Opernball’ is quoted as if in a dream, but offers no respite even in fleeting distraction, from the grim and violent reality of life in the Terezin ghetto. “Leise ist mir noch Hoffnung spatter Wiederkehr”…”Silently there is still hope (in me) for a late return…”Viktor Ullmann writes at that time. The climax of his last work is the fifth movement, the Theme, Variations and Fugue based on the melody of Yehuda Sharett’s Zionist song, composed in Berlin in 1932. Each of the minimalist eight variations weave in and out of Sharett’s ‘Song of Rachel’which is the setting of a poem by the Russian Jewish poet Rachel, in which she imagines herself as namesake to the Biblical matriarch: “Behold, her blood flows in my blood, her voice sings in mine - Rachel who tends Laban’s flock, Rachel mother of all mothers.”
Widely sung by the pioneers settling the land of Israel, Ullmann may well have come across this song from members of the Zionist youth movements in Terezin. Ullmann also finds the similarity in this melody to the Slovak national anthem ‘Lightning is over the Tatra’which was banned by the Nazi’s and the Hussite Hymn - ‘Ye who are God’sWarriors’, combining them as with great flair to appear as an audible illusion of one single song. He quotes J Cruger’s Chorale ‘Nun danket alle Gott (Now thank we all our God) and the name of B-A-C-Hand there is even an allusion to Wagner’s ‘Tristanand Isolde’ in the glorious and final resolution of Ullmann’s epic seventh sonata. The Fugue ends majestically and triumphantly in the key of D Major, with greatness of spirit and the best of humanity. What possible better testament to a life lived with an intense search for Truth, than one that is lived to the very end with such courage and heroic commitment to real artistry, musicianship and human dignity?
"...es ist das Ferne nicht beklagenswert, vielmehr das Nahe, das in ewigem Schatten ruht"
".....One should not mourn the far away, but the one which is close, in eternal shadow....."
Quotation of the verse-tradegy 'Tantalos' of Felix Braun, which Viktor Ullmann set into music as his 'Symphonische Phantasie' (the work is lost) and which he also used as a theme in his opera 'Der Kaiser von Atlantis'
"...Zu betonen ist nur, - das unser Kulturwille unserem Lebenswillen adaquat war...." Viktor Ullmann
"....The 'Greats' whom we take as examples, influence the 'habitus' by reaching into the very life-ducts of subsequent generations. And it seems to me that the cultivated European has had his behaviour and thoughts, world-view, language, relationship to life and art, determined by Goethe, regardless of how different the dialectical idealogies may fundamentally be. (The second great influence being the 'anthithesis', the 'counter-stream' which comes from Darwin and Nietzsche). For that reason, Goethe's maxim, 'Live in the moment, live in Eternity' always seemed to me to reveal the puzzling nature of art. Painting displaces the ephemeral, such as that of the still life with flowers that then wilt, or landscapes that change, the faces of people that grow older, or historical events of the past. Music does the same for the spiritual, for the emotions and passions of people, for the 'libido' as we in the west say, for Eros and Thanatos. It is from this point that the structure or the composition of a work must then become the conqueror of its substance.
Theresienstadt was and remains for me a school that teaches structure. Previously, where one was unable to experience that weight of cruelty due to 'comfort', (this magic of civilisation), one was allowed simply to disregard it; it was easy to create the beautiful form. Here, where artistic substance has to try and endure its daily structure, where every bit of divine inspiration stands counter to its surroundings, it is here that one finds the masterclass. It is here that one understands with Schiller: 'substance must be consumed by form'. This indeed is presumably the mission of mankind, and not just aesthetic mankind, but ethical mankind as well. I have composed quite a lot of new music here in Theresienstadt, mostly at the request of pianists, singers and conductors for the purpose of the Ghetto's recreation periods. It would be as irksome to count them, as it would be to remark on the fact that in Theresienstadt, it would be impossible to play a piano if there was none available. In addition, future generations will care little for the lack of music paper that we presently experience. I emphasise only the fact that in my musical work at Theresienstadt, I have bloomed in musical growth and not felt myself at all inhibited: we simply did not sit and lament on the shores of the rivers of Babylon that our will for culture was not sufficient to our will to exist. And I am convinced that all who have worked in life and art to wrestle content into its unyielding form will say that I was right......"
'Goethe and Ghetto' 1944, Viktor Ullmann/Trans. Michael Haas
http://www.viktorullmannfoundation.org.uk
http://www.pavelhaasfoundation.org
http://www.strangepassengerfestivacieszyn.org
For further information about 'Strange Passenger' Review, please refer to the Viktor Ullmann Foundation website.
Jacqueline Cole (Copyright)
Olivier Messiaen, Villeneuve les Avignon, Centre Acanthes, July 1987
“ The genius of two Terezin composers, Pavel Haas and Viktor Ullmann, was celebrated in a stirring recital…Haas’s Suite Opus 13 (1935) Cole projected the three fast movements with energy…two slow movements were imbued with poetic intensity….Ullmann’s exciting Seventh Sonata…. a powerful account”.
Jewish Chronicle 2002
“Tremendous resources of musicianship and artistry…”
Musical Opinion 2003
“Cole’s powerful insight drew us into this cauldron of horror, its introspective depth ultimately triumphing over adversity”.
Musical Opinion 2003
Tickets available from the box office at:
Wigmore Hall
36 Wigmore Street
London
W1U 2BP
United Kingdom
Tel: +44(0) 20 7935 2141
Fax: +44(0) 20 7935 3344
Website: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
E-mail: info@wigmore-hall.org.uk
£20, £17, £14, £10
Promoter: Viktor Ullmann Foundation http://www.viktorullmannfoundation.org.uk
Sponsor: Lord Ashdown Charitable Trust and the Polish Cultural Institute www.polishculture.org.uk
Manager: Erica Goddard
This concert is dedicated to the children and their families of Sir Nicholas Winton’s Kindertransport and presents two London UK Premiere’s of works for solo piano by Szymon Laks – his ‘Sonata Breve’ which he composed immediately after his liberation in 1946, for Marcelle de Lacour (1896-1997) who had been a student of Wanda Landowska; and ‘Ballade – Homage to Chopin’ – completed in Paris 1949, a century after the death of Fryderyk Chopin, for which he won the prestigious ‘Chopin Prize’ in Paris 1950.
As a musical tribute to the artistry and life of Szymon Laks this concert will also include compositions for piano of Laks’ contemporaries – PAVEL HAAS (1899-1944), SIEGMUND SCHUL (1916-1944), OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908-1992) and the quintessential Polish composer, FRYDERYK CHOPIN (1810-1849).
HOMAGE TO SZYMON LAKS 1901-1983
“Gdybys…………”
“Si Seulement……”
Ludwik Zuk-Skarszewski (1905 – 1974)
‘Przymierze’
Na glebie duszo, na glebie
Srebrzyste wypusc golebie
Z kwitnaca rozdzk? oliwna.
Golebie skrzydla rozwina,
Z radosna wroca nowina,
Przyfruna z wiescia przedziwna:
Ze Bog nam sady hoduje
Bog jasny Dom nam buduje
I tanczac kroki odmierza.
Do Boga s?once sie smieje,
A ponad Domen jasnieje
Tecza naszego Przymierza.
‘Covenant’
From the deep spirit, from the deep
Release silvery doves
With blooming olive branches.
The dove’s wings unfold,
Cheerfully they return with the news,
They come fluttering along with prodigious promise:
That God grows an orchard for us.
God builds us a true home
And dancing measures the steps.
The sun smiles at God.
And above the house shines
The rainbow of our covenant.
Julian Tuwim (1894-1953) Trans. Dr. William Smialek
‘In Praise of Szymon Laks’
A Letter to the Polish Institute, November 1984
Aleksander Tansman Trans. Krysta Close
“I have known Szymon Laks since he arrived in Paris in 1926. Both of us being of Polish origin, we both also chose France as the framework for our musical activities. We were separated by war for a lengthy and sorrowful period of time. I had the good fortune of leaving the country with my family on the last boat before the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Szymon Laks was deported to a concentration camp where he was only able to save his life because the Nazis enjoyed music….
After returning from Auschwitz, it took a few years before Szymon Laks was able to return completely to composition. One does not recover one’s creative equilibrium easily after such a harrowing experience. But once he resumed his musical work, he bestowed upon us two works of excellent quality, which immediately met with great public success. These were the Fourth String Quartet, which carried off the grand prize at the Quatuor de Liege Competition in 1962 (where I participated along with Roland-Manuel, as a member of the jury), and the Concerto da Camera, for which he received the grand prize at Divonne-les-Bains in 1964. Roland-Manuel wrote of the Fourth String Quartet and the author: ‘This piece whose author was unknown to me, was first set upon me with a sort of necessity, like a product marked with the unmistakable sign of the Ecole de Paris. It was a String Quartet whose instrumental composition was both clear and refined and so stitched together that the melodies were raised to the very height of harmonic taste, simultaneously revealing Slavonic nature and French culture. I subsequently discovered that I had not been greatly mistaken in my evaluation. The piece was written by Szymon Laks, who had begun his studies in Poland under Melcer and Stakowski then finished them with Paul Vidal and Henri Rabaud at the Paris Conservatoire. His discretion seemed to be the distinctive mark of a musician who is apparently reluctant to attract attention either to himself or to his art, though the little that I know of him and his work serves to tame and make charming even the most severe forms of pure music’….”Despite the interruption of his musical career and the loss of many scores destroyed by the war, Szymon Laks was abundant in his output, with some works still waiting to be discovered…I will cite principal titles: Sonatina for Piano; Quintet for Winds; Sonata for Cello and Piano;Polish Suite for Violin and Piano; five String Quartets;Brief Sonata forharpsichord/piano;Ballad – Homage to Chopin;Sinfonietta for String Orchestra; ……..The literary works (also) took a place of growing importance in the last few years of his life. We again find the same engaging personality of the polemicist of a universal culture, endowed with a quasi Anglo Saxon humour coloured by his Jewish heritage. In his books he returns, in various forms to those ideas, which were beyond musical composition, the three most central interests of his life: musicological problems, linguistic problems – it is appropriate to point out here that Szymon Laks was a talented translator, both from Polish to French and from French to Polish – and finally political problems, especially those concerning Jews all over the world and in the Middle East.
As we have seen, there is much to be said about the different aspects of the creative activities of Szymon Laks, concerning the extent of his knowledge and his conception of music in the contemporary world. An entire monograph would be necessary to handle this subject. Here I must be content to count myself among the most sincere admirers of the personality and the works of this man”.
‘A friend’ Aleksander Tansman – Royal Academy of Belgium
SZYMON LAKS was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw at the turn of the 20th Century – his paternal grandfather was a semi-official rabbi in a small town in the Polish countryside. Laks studied mathematics at the University of Vilnius, and musical composition and conducting at Warsaw Conservatoire with Henryk Melcer Szczawinski, Roman Statkowski, and Piotr Rytelbefore leaving Poland in 1925 to further his musical education for one year at the Academy of Music in Vienna.
Though there is a certain lack of clarity with regard to exactly where and when Laks studied (perhaps the best time frame of Laks life is viewed from the perspective of a chronological list of works, musical and literary) sources indicate that in 1926, Laks studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire with the French composer, conductor and teacher - Paul Vidal, who had been a pupil of Jules Massenet and César Franck; and Henri Rabaud – composer, conductor and director of the Paris Conservatoire who had been a prodigiously gifted student of Massenetand André Gedalge.
Born into a family for whom singing was of vital and life enriching significance, Szymon Laks and his brothers, as children, were actively involved singing in the Warsaw synagogue choir. Evidently, from letters of Szymon Laks’ brother Henry in 1986, family life growing up in Warsaw, must have given Szymon Laks a vibrantly supportive musical ‘landscape’ from which to discover his vocation.
Seriously influenced by a devotion to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Mendelssohn, and due to his subsequent studies in Warsaw, Vienna and Paris, Laks’ highly evocative musical style is close to the Ecole de Paris and is expressed most clearly in his sensitive vocal compositions whose source derives from a deep innate love, understanding and study of Polish and Yiddish folk idioms. With his lifelong friend and fellow musician Aleksander Tansman who was also a student of Piotr Rytel in Warsaw, Laks soon became active among the young Polish and Polish Jewish composers living in Paris prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, and an engaged member of a network of artists known as the ‘Association ofYoung Polish Musicians in Paris’. The Association was dissolved in 1950.
The Association’s aims were to promote Polish musicians and composers in France, to provide advice and materials and to be a source of moral as well as financial support with the aid of older and more established musicians and composers. Founded in 1926 by the Polish composer Piotr Perkowski, the spiritual patron was none other than Karol Szymanowski who had begun sending all of his students to Paris for study in the post- war years. Szymanowski believed that for a rebirth of contemporary Polish music to be successful, it was best achieved through assimilation into the ‘French’ style and by 1927 nearly all of the Polish composers of that period had studied in Paris.
Its honorary members included Ignacy Jan Paderewski (Honorary President), Nadia Boulanger, Artur Rubinstein, Pawel Kochanski, Leopold Stokowski, Karol Szymanowski and Aleksander Tansman. The Association also helped in promoting the works of its artists through the organisation of concerts and competitions for composers, very much integrated with leading French music authorities as judges. Naturally, a kind of creative exchange and ‘trade - off’ took place too, for young French composers who were given opportunities to have their works performed in Poland.
During this time, Laks worked as a music teacher, found work as a violinist in cafés, and in addition to his serious compositions, wrote several tangos under the pseudonyms André Lorent and Robert Axel. Simon Laks also accompanied silent films, and it was in this environment that his important and loyal friendship first began with the outstanding artist and pianist Vlado Perlemuter, who was also employed, improvising for silent films, when a student.
After two years spent travelling on an ocean liner on a world tour as freelance violinist in the late 1920’s, (younger brother Leo was similarly employed on another ship), Laks returned to Paris and was commissioned to write the music for a Polish film through his brother Henry, who worked in the film making industry. Laks’ always wrote under a pseudonym for such undertakings. This film, based on a Goethe novel From Day to Day was given the title Marysia in Polish and directed by Joseph Leytes, a Jewish director.
Meanwhile, Laks continued to receive awards and performances of early works for example ‘BluesSymphonique’ (1928); ‘Wind Quintet’ (1929); and’ ‘Second String Quartet’ (1932) - works which are lost. With the singer Tola Korian, he created a successful collaboration, which inspired numerous songs. Laks’ ‘Cello Sonata’ (1932), the 3rd Movement of which strangely prefigures the ‘Hymn to the Eternity of Jesus’ for Cello and Piano of his contemporary Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Quartet For The End of Time’ (Prisoner of War camp, Gorlitz, Silesia, 1940-1941) received its World Premiere in Paris the same year (1932). The work was dedicated to the cellist Maurice Marechal and Perlemuter and Marechal gave the first performance.
Laks’ loved the writings of Julian Tuwim, the most prominent founder of ‘Skamandra’ – a bohemian ‘literary movement’ in Warsaw of the 1920’s and 1930’s, the name of which refers to the Trojan River in Stanislaw Wyspianski’s Acropolis, which “glittered with a Vistula wave” (Czeslaw Milosz, ‘The History of Polish Literature’). Tuwim was a poet of great lyrical power. First published in 1918 ‘Czyhanie na Boga’ – ‘Waiting for God’ caused wide controversy. With each subsequent volume, Tuwim proved himself to be one of the most vibrant and fresh poets of his time. His later collections titled ‘Dancing Socrates’ (1920); ‘Poems Volume 4’ (1923); ‘Words in Blood’ (1926); ‘Czarnolas Language’ (1929) and ‘Gypsy Bible’ (1933) established him as literary pioneer of ‘Polish Futurism’ a discovery of exoticism in every day life. His literary style has been called ‘Whitman like in its joyous acceptance and affirmation of life’… ‘Przymierze’ – Covenant, quoted above, is a good example taken from Tuwim’s ‘debut’ collection. Laks, like other composers including Henryk Gorecki, have found special resonance with his poetry. One of his most beautiful songs, composed around 1938, makes use of the words of this poem. Through the vital poetic contribution of the Polish Neo – Realists such as Antoni Slonimski, Jaroslav Iwaszkiewicz, Stanislaw Balinski and Mieczyslaw Jastrun, - collective ‘co-founders’ of Skamandra – Szymon Laks kept discovering new reservoirs of inspiration for some of his most beautiful and enduring works. Worth mentioning is Laks Elegy for Jewish Villages written in 1961 on a poem by Slonimski, who then became his friend.
Laks’ arrest and deportation occurred in Paris in 1941, first to Pithiviers camp near Orleans in France, then to Auschwitz Birkenau in July 1942, on the sixth transport of the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Main Security Office).
Laks’ miraculous and precarious existence through the experience of the camp was in part due to one of his fellow comrades, the Polish Jewish composer and folklorist Ludwik Zuk Skarszewski who had been sent to Auschwitz I before Laks in the same year. It was here that Zuk Skarszewski discovered Szymon Laks, shortly after his arrival, completely disorientated, and almost dying. ?uk quite literally snatched Szymon Laks from the clutches of a convict detachment and despite the protests of his superiors arranged for Laks’ immediate transfer to the group of Notenschreiber - music copyists. From that time on, he did not have to go out to physical labour and was saved from a certain death on that occasion. His skills as Notenschreiber, translator and violinist subsequently led to his being Kapellmeister of Auschwitz II Mens Orchestra in Auschwitz Birkenau until 1944.
In 1944, Laks and his surviving comrades, Leon Weintraub and Tadeusz Jawor, were transported in the same cattle cars, this time to Oranienburg - Sachsenhausen for a short time, where Leon Weintraub died tragically. Here, Laks bade farewell to his companions including Tadeusz Jawor and Heinz Lewin. Not until after the liberation did Laks discover that Heinz Lewin had died at Mauthausen – Tadeusz Jawor survived, and in February 1974, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz, who had been incarcerated in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Laks discovered that ?uk had survived and was a school teacher in Chrzanow, Poland. His last memory of his friend was of seeing Zuk being carried on a stretcher to the ‘sick room’ – typhus ward, where he was told Zuk had died shortly afterwards. Simon Laks writes in his memoir:
“I wrote without delay to the address Kulisiewicz had given me. My letter was sent on the 10 February 1974; the answer came back at the beginning of March. Zuk wrote:
‘I read your letter with indescribable joy, since like you about me I had false information about you. Namely, Prof. Lachs, whom I mistakenly took for you, informed my wife that you had perished in Auschwitz. What luck that this turned out to be untrue! After my departure from Birkenau I was in Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Falkensee, where we worked on the production of tanks and V-2 rockets. There I was also ordered to organise a Lagerkapelle, in which there were musicians of worldwide fame as well as Negroes and mulattoes.
I will answer your questions. I was arrested on 15 April 1942 for taking part in underground teaching along with several other professors and after a long interrogation departed to Auschwitz I on 3 June. I was given the number 37,937. There I went through another interrogation about my participation in cultural and social life in Silesia, where I was alleged to have harassed Germans in the secondary school. I somehow emerged from this plight in one piece and after two weeks was sent for punishment to the SK (Strafkommando, penal detachment) in Bunawerke (now the O?wi?cim Chemical Works). On 27 June I was badly beaten up by a kapo (a prisoner in charge of a work detachment) for helping a Jew from Paris (whose name I do not remember) and dragged back to the camp along with the corpses of this detachment. I was lying on this heap of bodies when Dr Wasilewski, who was writing down the numbers of the corpses, stepped on my foot, and it turned out I was alive…Since Dr Wasilewski was in the “VIP’” (ie: for prisoners in higher positions) Barracks 24, where Franz Nierychlo, kapo of the kitchen and also conductor of the orchestra, lived, I managed to get into the Lagerkapelle as a violinist.
Shortly after this, sixteen musicians were selected and sent to Birkenau. Since I was a Notenschreiber and arranger, Nierychlo chose me to prepare the repertoire, for we had gotten instruments but no music. I had to recall marches and hits from memory, and it was while I was doing this job that you found me in Auschwitz”.
Laks continues: “So for more than thirty years both of us were convinced that theother was not alive. It took Aleksander Kulisiewicz’s collecting bug to rekindle a friendship that had been buried so long ago. What words should be used to celebrate such rediscoveries? I will not use any”.
It is important to add here that Laks two last songs, composed in October 1974, were set to words of Ludwik Zuk Skarszewski – ‘Gdybys’ (Si Seulement…) and later in November of the same year, ‘Pozegnanie’ (Adieu).
Then in November of 1944, Szymon Laks was sent to one of the many sub-camps called Kauferings (number 11) of Dachau, for the construction of an underground factory, a closely guarded ‘ terrible ‘secret of the Nazi machinery which was bombed within days of the arrival of the American Army, May 1945.
On 28 April 1945 the authorities of all the Kauferings ordered a general Antreten (assembly), three days after the meeting of the Allied and Soviet forces on the Elbe and Baltic and two days before Hitler’s suicide. The camp commander made an official speech, asking those in captivity to remember that they had been humanely treated in accordance with “universally recognised rules”. There was apparently some truth in this speech: in the Kaufering, Laks and his comrades had been watched by military guards rather than SS, but in any case it was the beginning of the end for Laks and his fellow survivors. Four days later, near the small camp of Buchberg, he was a free man.
After his ‘liberation,’ eventual return and ‘political exile’ to Paris, 18 May 1945, Szymon Laks continued his artistic life as writer and composer (including composing for film scores under a pseudonym) on a solitary path.
As a freelance musician, doing linguistic research and writing subtitles for films, his works during this time include his String Quartet No 3 (1945);‘Huit ChantsPopulaires Juifs’ for Soprano or Tenor and Piano (1947); ‘Symphony for Strings’ (1964); ‘L’Hirondelle Inattendue’ – opera – bouffe, in one-act (1965).
Then Szymon Laks almost abandoned composition completely after the ‘Six Day War’ in 1967, to devote entirely to his literary life as publicist and translator.
His autobiographical memoir titled ‘Music Of Another World’ (1948) rejected for publication in Poland because its portrayal of the Nazis was ‘too sympathetic,’ is a disturbing testament to the ‘lid of hell’ that he suffered and witnessed during his captivity. Andre Laks writes: “published originally in France, with the title ‘Musiquesd’un autre monde’, under the two names of S.Laks and R. Coudy, the revised - version has a Polish title which means ‘Auschwitzian Games’ or ‘Playings’. The title seemed impossible to the USA, who unfortunately adopted for the revised version a title translating that of the first book, ‘Music of Another World’. This has caused confusion, including in the catalogue of the Library of Congress. I explain all that in the text that will serve as a ‘Postface’ to the 2e edition of the French translation of the revised book ‘Melodies d’Auschwitz’ to appear in 3 weeks time (December 2004)…this text also touches upon the disagreeable matters, such as the anti-Semitism of assimilated Jews (Tuwim, Slonimski)”.
Szymon Laks writes:
“Since for a long time I was a member of the orchestra at Auschwitz IIand during a certain period its conductor, I regard it as my obligation to relate and some way to commemorate this strange chapter in the history of music, a chapter which will probably not be written by any professional historian of this art…however, in spite of my sincerest intentions, I shall not be able to omit entirely those ‘scenic and idyllic pictures’: to write about music in Birkenau without referring to the background against which this music was played would be counter to the aim and even sense of this book. For this is not a book about music. It is a book about music in a Nazi concentration camp. One could also say: about music in a distorting mirror.
Here is a quote from Victor Frankl’s book ‘Psychologist in a concentration camp.’
“Music as well as all other artistic endeavours were too grotesque in the concentration camp; they gave the impression of art only through the ghastly contrast with the background, which consisted of desperate existence.”
What conclusion can we reach from this? How was it really? Were or were not music and songs, factors in the ‘mental self- defense of prisoners’? (Polish periodical Przeglad Lekarski, 1977 Vol 1.)
It is difficult to make a judgement in the name of millions of people who passed through the Hitlerite camps, whether they died there or came out with their lives. In the end the supporters of one theory or the other were either witnesses of a small segment of camp life over a relatively short period of time or they base their opinions on documents left behind by victims. One must also consider that the music played in camps did not have the same effect on everyone. I personally believe that music was simply one of the parts of camp life and that it stupefied the newcomer in the same way as did everything else he encountered in the first days in the camp and to which he gradually became ‘habituated’ in time – up to the moment of complete acclimatization and callousness. Music kept up the’ spirit’ (or rather the body) of only…the musicians, who did not have to go out to hard labour and could eat a little better.
In the same issue of Przeglad Lekarski I read another pearl written by a professional musician, Adam Kopycinski, orchestra director in Auschwitz I: “Thanks to its power and suggestiveness, music strengthened in the camp listeners what was most important – their true nature. Perhaps that is why many certainly tried instinctively to make a certain cult out of this most beautiful of arts, which precisely there in camp conditions could be, and certainly was, medicine for the sick souls of the prisoners”.
It is hard for me to believe that this bombastic claptrap came from the mouth of a professional musician who was a prisoner in a real Hitlerite concentration camp and saw more or less the same things I saw in Birkenau. ‘Strengthened their true natures’! ‘Medicine for sick souls’! In reality, the true nature of the prisoner manifested itself, with very few exceptions, under the influence of hunger, floggings and illness, and the ‘medicine’ for his ‘sick soul’ was food and real medicines, not music”!
To conclude; this Homage to Szymon Laks, is not an attempt to make a memorial to the composer in Auschwitz Birkenau, but to make a musical celebration as tribute to him, with performances and study of his works. His compositional output is beautiful, abundant and still waiting to be discovered, especially his chamber and orchestral music, songs for voice and piano and choral works!
Szymon Laks died in Paris 1983. He had stood alone, and as an outsider- a free man, inspite of his journey through the abyss. His voice and his writings, polemical as they are, remain as relevant as they were immediately after his liberation, uncomfortable and challenging as his political perception has the justification to be. When are we going to listen?
Jacqueline Cole ©
Quotations from ‘Music of Another World’ with kind permission of Andre Laks ©
With special thanks to the estates of Aleksander Tansman, Ludwik Zuk Skarszewski, Julian Tuwim, and to Dr William Smialek, Molly Jane McCoy and Professor Dr. Andre Laks.
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