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Little
is known of Viktor Ullmann’s early years, but his later activities suggest a
childhood rife with musical experimentation. Raised a German-Czech until a 1909
move to Austria, Ullmann attended law school in Vienna in 1918 after serving a
year as a decorated soldier in the imperial army. While there he enrolled in
composition seminars with Arnold Schoenberg, an endeavor which no novice would
or could undertake. He made such a favorable impression on Schoenberg that he
recommended the young man for employment in 1919 to Alexander Zemlinsky,
musical director and conductor of the New German Theatre in Prague. By 1920
Ullmann had taken on the role of chorus master and reptiteur, and later
advanced to an associate conductor. These experiences prepared him for taking
on an opera house of his own for the 1927 season in the North Bohemian town of
Aussig (now Usti nad Labem). There he arranged a series of exciting and
well-received programs, including performances of works by Mozart, Strauss,
Smetana, and Wagner.
Over
these years Ullmann also produced a number of original compositions; two of the
most prominent were his Symphonic Fantasy
and Variations and Fugue on a Theme
by Arnold Schoenberg. After just one season at Aussig, Ullmann returned for
uncertain reasons to Prague, where he advertised his services as a teacher and
wrote more pieces, including a Concerto
for Orchestra. While working as a conductor and music director at the Zurich
Theater from 1929-1931, Ullmann developed intensified interest in the study of
anthroposophy, a school of thought based in Dornach, Switzerland and led by the
writings of Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophists believe in the ability of human
intellect to transcend the physical world and lead to ultimate levels of pure
spirituality. From 1931-1933 Ullmann gave up his musical work entirely to live
in Stuttgart and run an anthroposophist bookshop. The rise to power of the Nazi
party in early 1933, however, led him back to Prague from Germany, and back to
a life of music as well.
Once
back in the Czech lands, Ullmann busied himself in a number of different
music-related activities. Besides continuing to compose and teach, the composer
went “back to school” himself, taking lessons with the modernist composer Alois
Haba. Other occupations included contributing to radio broadcasts, publishing
music reviews, and participating in musical societies. Two of his numerous
compositions received international critical acclaim in the form of Hertzka
Prizes: one in 1934 for a reworking of his Variations
and Fugue on a Theme by Arnold Schoenberg and another in 1936 for the opera
Der Sturz des Antichrist. 1938 marked
his last pleasure venture out of Prague when he travelled to London for a
performance of his String Quartet No. 2
at a new music festival. His next trip would be anything but pleasant.
Ullmann
arrived in a transport to Terezin on September 8 of 1942, and his presence
quickly made an impact on the Freizeitgestaltung.
His impressive range of participation included organizing productions of New
Music and Renaissance Music, writing critiques of concerts, providing piano
accompaniment and performances (Ullmann was also an accomplished pianist),
lecturing on composers like Mahler and Schoenberg, teaching composition, and
advising various performance groups, many of whom performed his own works. Of
any of Terezin’s composers, Ullmann threw himself into musical expression with
the most passion—certainly in terms of output! Composing at a breakneck pace,
he wrote 23 works in just 24 months. Considering the wretched situation in
Terezin, one can’t help but assume his anthroposophic beliefs guided this
artistic devotion under such adverse conditions—his diary entries<link>
suggest this as well. Fortunately many of these works survive to this day, the
most admirable of which include his String
Quartet No. 3, a melodrama Der Weise
von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke, and the one-act opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis (which is fully
detailed in Opera as Protest <link>). Like so many of his fellow
musicians, Ullmann was among those on the fateful October 16th
transport of 1944 to Auschwitz where he perished in the gas chambers two days
later. What else this greatly talented musician and intellectual could have
accomplished remains yet another sad question mark in the heartbreaking history
of the Holocaust.
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