SILENCED COMPOSERS

A couple of years ago I wrote about composer Messaien’s, The End of Time, written while incarcerated in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. Last week, the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) reminded us of the music of those composers who did not survive – composers who were Jewish victims of Nazism. Three of these composers were in their 40s when they died/ were murdered, and one was only 26. We can only know their early and mid-career music, and must imagine what they might have created had they lived their natural life-spans.

All of the music in this concert was for wind instruments, some also with piano. The first piece was a wind quintet by Pavel Haas, written when he was in his early twenties, some years before the war. Although I play a wind instrument, I sometimes don’t like the medium of…