Pavel Haas as a Film Music Composer
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The composer Pavel Haas (1899-1944) was born in the family of a Jewish merchant in Brno (now the Czech Republic). In this town he also studied in the class of Leoš Janáček. The influence of his teacher is completely evident in Haas´s sense of musical shortcut and his warm relationship with Moravian folk songs. In his compositional work Haas focused mainly on the orchestral, chamber and vocal pieces. In my paper I would like to talk about his music for film which the musicologists have completely neglected so far. I am going to analyze the Haas´s way of composing in three film scores: Život je pes (1933), Mazlíček (1934) and Kvočna (1937). A logical question appears: who asked Pavel Haas and gave him the opportunity to compose the film scores? It was his brother Hugo Haas, who became famous as an actor and a film director in Prague Barrandov studios in 1930s, as well as later in Hollywood where he fled to from the Nazzis. What I consider exceptional is the fact, that all the Haas´s manuscripts of film scores have been completely preserved, including the handwritten notes both in the scores and in the scripts. This sources enable us to make a complete picture of his way of composing as the gradual process, thanks to which we don´t have to rely on the final product, the film alone, only. I am going to specify typical structural elements of music in individual scores including the alternative versions, that is the harmonic-melodic as well as the formal structure of each score, which we can compare with works of Haas´s contemporaries. Unfortunately, we can only speculate how Haas´s compositional work would progress. His was killed shortly after his transport to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. |
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