Viktor Ullmann

Infobox Person
name = Viktor Ullmann


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birth_date = birth date|1898|1|1
birth_place = Teschen, Austria-Hungary
death_date = death date and age|1944|10|18|1898|1|1
death_place = Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany
residence =
ethnicity = Jewish
citizenship = Austrian, Czechoslovak
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occupation = Composer, pianist
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Viktor Ullmann (b. 1 January 1898 in Teschen, Austro-Hungarian Empire, now divided between Cieszyn in Poland and Český Těšín in the Czech Republic; d. 18 October 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau) was an Austrian composer, conductor and pianist.

Biography

Viktor Ullmann was born on 1 January 1898 in Teschen, the modern Cieszyn. Both his parents were from families of Jewish descent, but had converted to Roman Catholicism before Viktor's birth. His father, Maximilian, was able as an assimilated Jew to pursue the career of a professional officer in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; in World War I he was promoted to colonel and ennobled.

From 1909 Viktor attended a grammar school ("Gymnasium") in Vienna. His musical talents and inclinations soon gave him access to Arnold Schönberg and his circle of pupils. As soon as he had finished school he volunteered for military service.

After deployment on the Italian Front, at Isonzo, he was granted study leave, which he used to obtain an introduction to the study of law at Vienna University. There he attended also the lectures of Wilhelm Jerusalem. At the beginning of 1918 he was also accepted in Schönberg's composition seminar. With Schönberg himself he studied the theory of form, counterpoint and orchestration. Ullmann was an excellent pianist, although he had no ambitions for a career as a soloist.

In May 1919 he broke off both courses of study and left Vienna in order to devote himself fully to music in Prague. His mentor was now Alexander von Zemlinsky, under whose direction he was conductor at the New German Theatre of Prague (now the Prague State Opera) until 1927. (In the following season, 1927-28, he was appointed head of the opera company in Aussig an der Elbe (Ústí nad Labem), but his repertoire (including operas by Richard Strauss, Krenek and others) was too advanced for local tastes, and the appointment was terminated).

In 1923 with the "Sieben Lieder mit Klavier" ("7 Songs with Piano") there began a series of successful performances of his works, which lasted until the beginning of the 1930s ("Sieben Serenaden"). At the Geneva music festival of the International Society for New Music in 1929, his "Schönberg Variations", a piano cycle on a theme by his teacher in Vienna, caused something of a stir. Five years later, for the orchestral arrangement of this work, he was awarded the Hertzka Prize (named in honour of the former director of Universal Editions). In the meantime he had been appointed conductor in Zürich for two years. As a result of his interest in anthroposophy (founded by Rudolf Steiner) he spent another two years as a bookseller in Stuttgart, but was forced to flee in mid-1933 and returned to Prague as a music teacher and journalist.

During this period he worked with the department of music in Czechoslovak Radio, wrote book and music reviews for various magazines, was employed as a critic for the "Bohemia" newspaper, lectured to educational groups, gave private lessons and was actively involved in the programme of the Czechoslovak Society for Music Education. At about that time Ullmann made friends with the composer Alois Hába, whom he had known for some time. Ullmann enrolled in Hába's department of quarter-tone music at the Prague Conservatoire, where he studied for two years (1935-1937).

If the works of the 1920s still clearly show the influence of Schönberg's atonal phase (especially the Chamber Symphony Op. 9, the George Songs Op. 15 and "Pierrot Lunaire", Op. 21), the compositions from 1935 onwards are distinguished by independent development of the inspirations received from Schönberg (String Quartet No. 2, Piano Sonata No. 1) and of the controversial issues raised by Alban Berg's opera "Wozzeck" (the opera "Fall of the Antichrist"). Dissonant harmonics, highly charged musical expression and masterly control of the formal structure are characteristic of Ullmann's new and from now on unmistakable personal style.

On 8 September 1942 he was deported to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. Up to his deportation his list of works had totalled 41 opus numbers and contained inter alia a further three piano sonatas, song cycles from various poets, operas and the piano concerto Op. 25, which he finished in December 1939, that is, nine months after the entry of German troops into Prague. Most of these works are missing; the manuscripts presumably disappeared during the occupation. There survive however 13 printed items, which Ullmann published privately and entrusted to a friend for safekeeping.

The particular nature of the camp at Theresienstadt enabled Ullmann to remain active musically: he was a piano accompanist, organised concerts ("Collegium musicum", "Studio for New Music"), wrote critiques of musical events and composed, as part of a cultural circle including Karel Ančerl, Rafael Schachter, Gideon Klein, Hans Krása and other prominent musicians also imprisoned there.

On 16 October 1944 he was deported to the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where on 18 October 1944 he was killed in the gas chambers.

The work he comleted in Theresienstadt was mostly preserved, and comprises - apart from choral works, song cycles and a quantity of stage music - such significant works as the last three piano sonatas, the Third String Quartet, the melodrama based on Rilke's "Cornet" poem and the chamber opera "The Emperor of Atlantis, or The Refusal of Death", with a libretto by Peter Kien. This work was not performed in Theresienstadt. The original premier was due to take place in the autumn of 1944, conducted by Rafael Schachter, but the SS commander noticed similarities between the Emperor of Atlantis and Adolf Hitler. The work was suppressed. The opera was first performed in Amsterdam in 1975. It has been broadcast by BBC television in Britain, and there have been a number of productions in several countries. Important productions took place in Bremen and Stuttgart in 1990.

In these works, and particularly in the "Emperor" and the "Cornet", Ullmann was concerned with the fundamental questions of his artistic "Weltanschauung", having to accommodate the realities of the living conditions in a Nazi concentration camp; the aesthetic problem of transforming already existing material into artistic shape; and the ethical problem of the continuous conflict between spirit and matter.

The most concrete formulation of this discourse, in terms of content, occurs in the "Emperor" opera, with the parable of the Emperor's game with Death for Life. The "game", which concerns nothing less than the total destruction of all human life planned by the Emperor and Death's thwarting of this insane purpose, ends with the ruin of the Emperor and with the vision of a new understanding between life and death.

With the musical formulation of this subject, presumably connected to the contemporary situation, Viktor Ullmann created a timeless paradigm of how through the positive powers of humankind the inhumanity of every tyrannical regime can be overcome.

Chronology

*1898 Born in Teschen (in Austrian Silesia) on 1 January
*1909-16 Attended school in Vienna
*1916-18 Military service as a volunteer; service at the Front; promotion to Lieutenant
*1918 Attended the University of Vienna, studying law and attending Arnold Schönberg's "composition seminar"
*1920 autumn: Choirmaster and co-repetiteur under Alexander von Zemlinsky in the New German Theatre in Prague; later (1922-27) conductor
*1925 Composition of the "Schönberg Variations" for piano (first performance 1926 in Prague)
*1927-1928 Director of Opera in Aussig an der Elbe (Ústí nad Labem); afterwards back in Prague without a position
*1929 Success of the "Schönberg Variations" at the music festival of the International Society for New Music ("Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik"; IGNM) in Geneva
*1929-1931 Composer and conductor for stage music in the theatre at Zürich
*1931-1933 Bookdealer in Stuttgart (proprietor of the anthroposophical "Novalis-Bücherstube")
*1933 Flight from Stuttgart; return to Prague
*1934 Hertzka Prize for the orchestral arrangement of the "Schönberg Variations" (Op. 3b)
*1935-1937 Instruction in composition from Alois Hába
*1936 Hertzka Prize for the opera "The Fall of the Antichrist" (Op. 9)
*1938 After the performance of the Second String Quartet at the IGMN Festival in London Ullmann stays for about two months in Dornach near Basle
*1939 Beginning of the persecution of the Jews in the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia"
*1942 8 September Deportation to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp; active as composer, conductor, pianist, organiser, teacher and music critic. Most important compositions preserved in manuscript: 3 piano sonatas; piano sonatas; songs; opera "The Emperor of Atlantis"; melodrama "The Manner of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke"
*1944 16 October Transfer to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was murdered in the gas chambers on 18 October 1944

List of the Prague and Theresienstadt works

In the middle of 1942, shortly before his deportation to Theresienstadt concentration camp, Ullmann drew up a comprehensive list of his compositions to that point. This list was preserved in a London library as part of a letter to a correspondent whom it has not hitherto been possible to identify. In contrast to earlier lists of works, the London list is distinguished by an unbroken sequence of opus numbers (1-41) and the unmistakable incorporation of works or titles already known. Ullmann's list of works is of incalculable value in the light of the lost or missing compositions, although it makes clear the full extent of the loss caused by persecution and war.

In the following summary Ullmann's opus numbering has been used, and extended for the opus numbers given to works composed in Theresienstadt. The order of titles is essentially chronological and takes account both of compositions known from earlier lists of works as well as of those bibliographically recorded. Uncertain dating is indicated by (?). Traces of an earlier numeration derive from the list of works from the 1920s ("Riemann Musiklexikon" 11/1929). These references occur only in connection with the "Schönberg Variations", which in relation to the opus numeration and to the chronology cut across the principle of arrangement used.

Prague works

Theresienstadt works

References

(in German and Czech and English):
* Initiative Hans Krása in Hamburg: "Komponisten in Theresienstadt" ISBN 3-00-005164-3
* Karas, Joza: "Music in Terezin 1941-1945" (Beaufort Books Publishers nd, New York)
* Ludvova, Jitka: Viktor Ullmann, in: "Hudebni veda" 1979. No. 2, pp 99-122
* Schultz, Ingo: Viktor Ullmann, in: "Flensburger Hefte", Sonderheft Nr.8, Summer 1991, pp 5-25
* ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre "Tracks to Viktor Ullmann" [including Articles and Essays written by Herbert Thomas Mandl (he worked with Ullmann as a violinist in Terezín), Ingo Schultz, Jean-Jacques Van Vlasselaer, Dzevad Karahasan, Herbert Gantschacher) edition selene, Vienna 1998
* Herbert Thomas Mandl "Tracks to Terezín" Interview with Herbert Thomas Mandl about Terezín and Viktor Ullmann, DVD, ARBOS Vienna-Salzburg-Klagenfurt 2007
* Herbert Gantschacher "Witness and Victim of the Apocalypse" (Exhibition and book about Viktor Ullmann in World War I and the influence of the experiences of war to his music especially to the opera "The Emperor of Atlantis or The Refusal of Death") ARBOS Vienna-Salzburg-Klagenfurt-Arnoldstein 2007
* Erich Heyduck / Herbert Gantschacher "Viktor Ullmann - Way to the Front 1917" DVD ARBOS VIENNA-Salzburg-Klagenfurt 2007

External links

(in German and English):
*
* [http://www.viktorullmannfoundation.org.uk/index.html Viktor Ullmann Foundation]
* [http://mitglied.lycos.de/mwiener/ullmann/ullmann.htm Ullmann biography and list of works]
* [http://www.musica-reanimata.de/ Musica Reanimata] (about composers persecuted by the Nazi regime)
* [http://www.jmi.org.uk/ Jewish Music Institute]
* [http://www.terezinmusic.org/ Music of Theresienstadt]
* [http://claudet.club.fr/Terezin/index.html Comprehensive discography of Terezin Composers by Claude Torres]