Introduction

Summary

During the Second World War, the 34 Dutch composers represented in this book were persecuted, and performance of their work became a punishable offence. Nineteen were deported to concentration camps, and only six of them survived. Others went into hiding or used forged documents to stay alive. For most, it meant the end of their careers. After the war their music was forgotten. This book is a testament to the fact that the Nazis did not succeed in obliterating their lives and work; it is part of the process of bringing them and their music back to public attention. It is, indeed, an attempt to restore the voices and the rightful place of a ‘lost generation’ and reflects 25 years of research by the Leo Smit Foundation on persecuted and forgotten composers.

A Quarter-Century of Research

The Leo Smit Foundation, founded in 1996, was named after the Dutch composer Leo Smit (1900–43).1 The Netherlands lost a brilliant composer when he was murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp on 30 April 1943. Smit had an international reputation, and his work had often been performed by the prestigious Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Although his work was preserved, post-war interest in his music was non-existent. The war had not only ended his life but also seemed to mark the end of any interest in his musical legacy.

That was the status quo until the 1990s, when his work as a composer was rediscovered. Touched by the remarkable quality of his music, one of us, Eleonore Pameijer, a flautist, and the pianist Frans van Ruth took the initiative of establishing the Leo Smit Foundation, with the aim of reviving and honouring that musical legacy, drawing attention to other forgotten composers from this period and creating a bridge between music from the inter-war period and contemporary music. Research, publications and concerts all contribute to achieving these goals. In Amsterdam, over 200 ‘Uilenburg Concerts’ – so called after the concert venue, the eighteenth-century Uilenburg Synagogue – have been performed for enthusiastic and ever-expanding audiences. Smit's complete oeuvre has been recorded, and the historian and musicologist Jurjen Vis published his biography under the auspices of the Foundation.