Pavel Haas Quartet

Pavel Haas (1899-1944)

Janáček’s ill-fated star pupil

Born in Brno of Moravian-jewish heritage, Pavel Haas, from whom the Quartet takes its name, studied at the Music School of the Beseda Philharmonic Society. In 1919, he enrolled at the Brno Conservatory, where eventually, in 1921, he joined Janácˇek’s composition class. Janácˇek’s teaching and music proved the most crucial formative influence on Haas’s own music. He went on to compose several film scores and a good deal of incidental music for the Provincial Theatre in Brno, where his tragi-comic opera The Charlatan had a successful performance in April 1938.

In December 1941, Haas was arrested by the Nazis for his Jewish heritage and transported to Terezín (Theresienstadt), where he was held for three years. A good deal of music written by Haas and his colleagues while in Terezín was subsequently destroyed, so it is uncertain how much he composed in those years, though he certainly wrote three string quartets, an unfinished symphony, Four Songs on Chinese Poetry for baritone and piano, a work for male chorus titled Al s’fod (apparently his first and only work to set a Hebrew text) and a Study for String Orchestra which was premiered in Terezín under the Czech conductor Karel Anˇcerl. A performance of the latter work was filmed by the Nazis for propaganda purposes during an inspection by the International Red Cross. Haas was finally sent to Auschwitz, where he was gassed on 17 October 1944.