Pavel Haas : Janacek's Most Gifted Pupil?
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Czech Music Quarterly |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Art, architecture, cultural heritage |
| Keywords | Pavel Haas; Czech music; Czech jewish music |
| Description | In the course of the 1920s and 30s Pavel Haas (1899-1944) earned a reputation for himself in broader cultural consciousness as an original composer and Janáček's "most talented student". Yet Janáček’s influence would only fully manifest itself at the moment when, striving to find his own creative methods, he distanced himself from his teacher. Haas was a composer who to an extent greater than that of Janáček’s other pupils responded to the stimuli arriving in Czech music from outside, primarily those of the French modernists. By his embracing the tendencies that would in the future affect the development of modern music, he resembles a few other Czech composers of note (Martinů, for instance). Yet these partial syntheses notwithstanding, Haas did not craft a truly singular style of his own. Another essential trait of Haas is that he made only a rather marginal contribution to the future evolution of Czech music. This may have been down to several reasons, some of them being purely practical. Haas did not compose continuously, and his educational activities were not ample. After World War II, the awareness of Haas’s music was for a long time limited to a select few, mostly chamber, works. |
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