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2 Tempo 59 (234) 2-18 © 2005 Cambridge University Press DOI: 10.1017/S0040298205000276 Printed in the United Kingdom Boosey & Hawkes Archive GIDEON KLEIN, MORAVIAN COMPOSER Robin Freeman Editor's note: Robin Freeman, who was a frequent contributor to Tempo in the 1990s, both in his own name and under his favoured alias of 'Tristram Pugin' (signifying Shandeian Gothick, perhaps), died of leukemia after long illness in November 2004. About a year before he had e-mailed the present essay to the Editor of Tempo, apparently more for interest than as a formal submission. Despite the characteristic difficulties of the text, some of which have been modified in the editing process, and its equally characteristic heedlessness of reputations (few other writers would have had the chutzpah to dismiss Charles Rosen's The Classical Style as 'underinformed and overambitious'!), it has seemed well worth publishing here. Intense interest currently subsists in those Bohemian and Moravian composers, musicians, authors and artists, mostly though not exclusively Jewish, who lived and worked in the Nazi internment camp at Terezin (Teresienstadt), before most of them subsequently perished at Auschwitz. Despite a plethora of recordings, books and articles in recent years, in some cases the evaluation of the composers' music has scarcely begun. Among these, one of the youngest yet clearly one of the most important was Gideon Klein, only 26 at his death, who has so far been known by only an apparent handful of works, the most frequently heard nowadays being the Piano Sonata and String Trio. The present essay is undated, but its intimately-related 'Excursus' (almost as long as the essay itself, and with its own bristling apparatus of footnotes) is dated 1996-7. For reasons of space the Excursus will appear in Tempo 60.235. In fact the 'single essay' referred to in the author's 'Preliminary Note' almost certainly comprises both 'Gideon Klein, Moravian Composer' and the Excursus. The latter is entitled 'Nedej zahynouti nam ni budoucim, Sváty Václave' (referring to the Medieval song about Bohemia's patron saint, known in English as the 'Wenceslas Chorale'); it considers at length and in a wider context a question touched upon in the Essay and indicated in its title - the extent to which Klein and his fellow-internees at Terezin should be considered exclusively as Jewish composers. It is clear that Robin Freeman wanted essay and Excursus to be read together (which space has not permitted here), not least because the two quotations which he uses as epigraphs for the essay are most extensively referred to in the Excursus. On the other hand the memorial dedication of the essay is dependent on the second quotation, so transferring the quotations to the Excursus (which has its own epigraphs) was not an option. Preliminary Note: What follows is a single essay split onto different levels because of difficulties in treating the subject. At the beginning all the rooms are above ground but soon the dark stairs of footnotes lead down from those Elysian chambers where alone one speaks of Klein the artist and the monuments he left behind, to a cellar of constraint and torment, itself rendered more sinister by the faulty vision of those who have tried to look there and from which further notes lurch down

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Tempo 59 (234) 2-18 © 2005 Cambridge University Press DOI: 10.1017/S0040298205000276 Printed in the United Kingdom

Boosey & Hawkes Archive

GIDEON KLEIN, MORAVIAN COMPOSER

Robin Freeman

Editor's note: Robin Freeman, who was a frequent contributor to Tempo in the 1990s, both in his own name and under his favoured alias of 'Tristram Pugin' (signifying Shandeian Gothick, perhaps), died of leukemia after long illness in November 2004. About a year before he had e-mailed the present essay to the Editor of Tempo, apparently more for interest than as a formal submission. Despite the characteristic difficulties of the text, some of which have been modified in the editing process, and its equally characteristic heedlessness of reputations (few other writers would have had the chutzpah to dismiss Charles Rosen's The Classical Style as 'underinformed and overambitious'!), it has seemed well worth publishing here.

Intense interest currently subsists in those Bohemian and Moravian composers, musicians, authors and artists, mostly though not exclusively Jewish, who lived and worked in the Nazi internment camp at Terezin (Teresienstadt), before most of them subsequently perished at Auschwitz. Despite a plethora of recordings, books and articles in recent years, in some cases the evaluation of the composers' music has scarcely begun. Among these, one of the youngest yet clearly one of the most important was Gideon Klein, only 26 at his death, who has so far been known by only an apparent handful of works, the most frequently heard nowadays being the Piano Sonata and String Trio.

The present essay is undated, but its intimately-related 'Excursus' (almost as long as the essay itself, and with its own bristling apparatus of footnotes) is dated 1996-7. For reasons of space the Excursus will appear in Tempo 60.235. In fact the 'single essay' referred to in the author's 'Preliminary Note' almost certainly comprises both 'Gideon Klein, Moravian Composer' and the Excursus. The latter is entitled 'Nedej zahynouti nam ni budoucim, Sváty Václave' (referring to the Medieval song about Bohemia's patron saint, known in English as the 'Wenceslas Chorale'); it considers at length and in a wider context a question touched upon in the Essay and indicated in its title - the extent to which Klein and his fellow-internees at Terezin should be considered exclusively as Jewish composers. It is clear that Robin Freeman wanted essay and Excursus to be read together (which space has not permitted here), not least because the two quotations which he uses as epigraphs for the essay are most extensively referred to in the Excursus. On the other hand the memorial dedication of the essay is dependent on the second quotation, so transferring the quotations to the Excursus (which has its own epigraphs) was not an option.

Preliminary Note: What follows is a single essay split onto different levels because of difficulties in treating the subject. At the beginning all the rooms are above ground but soon the dark stairs of footnotes lead down from those Elysian chambers where alone one speaks of Klein the artist and the monuments he left behind, to a cellar of constraint and torment, itself rendered more sinister by the faulty vision of those who have tried to look there and from which further notes lurch down

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