Suggestions for Composers affected by the two World Wars?

R

rdenig_male

New member
I have to prepare for two presentations over the coming few months relating to composers affected in one way or another by the two World Wars.

I have a number of names, some obvious, some less so:-

UK, Butterworth, Coles (both killed on the Somme), Ernest Farrar (killed less than two months before the end of WWI), Ivor Gurney (shell shocked and descended into mental illness as a result, Walter Leigh (killed at Tobruk in WW2), Vaughan Williams (served throughout WWI as an artillery officer)

France, Jehan Alain (brother of Marie-Claire Alain, the organist) killed 5 days before France surrendered in 1940)

Germany, Rudi Stephan (killed in the trenches of Galicia, 1915)

Russia, Shostakovitch (lived through the siege of Leningrad)

Australia, F.S Kelly (a friend of Rupert Brooke, killed on the Somme after surviving Gallipoli)

In addition there are the Jewish composers, such as Pavel Haas, who were interned in the 'model' concentration camp of Theresienstadt.

Can anyone assist by adding any names to the above list? In particular, does anyone know of any American composers? Or can add to my meagre list of Germans?
 
Don't forget poor old Anton Webern (Austrian), killed by a trigger-happy American GI while accidentally breaking curfew for an after-dinner smoke in the garden in 1945.

Both Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett were conscientious objectors (I'm not sure what I think about that). Britten went to live in the USA during WWII, while Tippett served time in prison for refusing to serve in the armed forces.

Enrique Grandos (Spain) drowned on 24 March 1916 when the ferry he was on crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe following a recital tour in England was sunk by a German U-Boat.

Olivier Messiean was interred in a German prisoner-of-war camp during 1940-41, during which time he wrote the 'Quartet for the End of Time' to be performed by himself and three other musician prisoners.

Among the composers murdered by or who perished under the Nazis include Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, ErvÃ*n Schulhoff, Karel Svenk and Viktor Ullmann.

In the USA, Samuel Barber and Marc Blitzstein were both commissioned to write music for the Army Air Corps during WWII, while Eugene Goossens and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra invited American composers to create short fanfares that opened their concerts, and the League of Composers commissioned short pieces, based on a war-associated theme, which the New York Philharmonic premiered between 1943 and 1945. Aaron Copland's ‘A Fanfare for the Common Man’ was the most important of these.

Going back to the Siege of Leningrad, while Shostakovich served as a firefighter and survived the Siege, his promising pupil Beniamin Fleischman did not – dying of starvation in 1941 at the young age of only 27.

Edit:
Dutch composer Matthijs Vermeulen lost his son during WWII while fighting for the liberation forces against the Nazi German army.

Another promising English composer - the first to be killed in WWI - was William Denis Browne in 1914. He composed a number of beautiful songs which have recently been recorded.

Sorry, rdenig - I should also have said something along the lines of 'do your own homework!', shouldn't I? ;-)
 
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