The Music of Pavel Haas

The Czech composer Pavel Haas (18991944) is commonly positioned in the history of twentieth-century music as a representative of Leo Janeks compositional school and as one of the Jewish composers imprisoned by the Nazis in the concentration camp of Terezn (Theresienstadt). However, the nature of Janeks influence remains largely unexplained and the focus on the context of the Holocaust tends to yield a one-sided view of Haass oeuvre. The existing scholarship offers limited insight into Haass compositional idiom and does not sufficiently explain the composers position with respect to broader aesthetic trends and artistic networks in inter-war Czechoslovakia and beyond. This book is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive (albeit necessarily selective) discussion of Haass music since the publication of Lubomr Peduzzis life and work monograph in 1993. It provides the reader with an enhanced understanding of Haass music through analytical and hermeneutical interpretation as well as cultural and aesthetic contextualisation, and thus reveal the rich nuances of Haass multi-faceted work which have not been sufficiently recognised so far.