Karl Rossmann - FRAGMENTS
I have an old suitcase which used to belong to Karl Rossmann. His wife was about
to throw it out when I saw that the ‘rubbish’ inside was in fact
music manuscripts. I intervened, went through the papers and was duly given
the suitcase, which I still use. At that time little of his music was recorded
or performed, his books were out of print, and his paintings (admittedly the
least important part of his output) dispersed and uncatalogued. Karl Rossmann
destroyed as much evidence of his existence as he could find.
There is, however, no particular reason to celebrate the life and work of Karl
Rossmann today rather than any other day - there is no anniversary or imminent
book launch. But I find that few days pass without my thinking of him in some
way, partly perhaps because of the suitcase which now occasionally houses my
own manuscripts. From 1976 to 1997, his centenary year, I was the ‘official
biographer’ and although I wrote a number of pieces on him, arranged exhibitions,
and edited some of his unpublished scores
In spite of his picaresque life and many eccentricities, it ought to be, and
is, as a composer that Rossmann is best known. His artistic output was not only
music, of course, and his output in any case was not particularly large. There
are about 30 works in all and there are occasional gaps of up to three years
between one piece and the next. But what he did produce shows that he was one
of the few truly original Czech composers of the last century. However, he also
published 7 novels in his later years, 2 volumes of poetry and had two one-man
exhibitions of his paintings in the 1930’s. Beyond that he had many close
friends within the worlds of literature, music and art, and was closely involved
with the development of Czech avantguard with his friend and ally painter Jan
Zrzavy. Through Prague’s darkest drawing rooms....he moved.. a sort of missionary
of the arts.” Welszar Ernest talks about how he first saw Rossmann from a distance,
entering a Prague palazzo, and clearly wanted to be a part of this world. The
bulk of his music was written between the two world wars - it was in 1918 that
he inherited the title - though his earliest successful pieces were written
before that, and accepted for publication, while he was a diplomatic attaché
at the Cehoslovakia Embassy in Warszawa. There he became friends with Karol
Szymanowski [1883-1935], who maintained his high regard for Rossmann’ work (even
in 1934 Szymanowski told Petr Zieg that Karl Rossmann was the best composer
of his generation), with Casella (who gave the premiere of the In Hora Mortis
in Rome).
In his lifetime he exhibited over 100 oil paintings all of which are now lost
or in private collections. Most were landscapes - Night
Landscapes.
Jozef A.
BÖSE ZEIT
Kein Wein im Glase mehr
Dass Liebe sterben kann
Und wie die Liebe sterben
So sterben auch wir
Ein Krieg geschlagen wird
Nun sind wir still
Kommt mir Erinnerung zurück
Kein Wein im Glase mehr
Gib mir die Hand
Wo ist die Zeit.
/Karl Rossmann- 1946./
Karl Rossmann - FRAGMENTS
Sergey Korolyov - Space Conqueror