- Born
- DiedOctober 18, 1944 · Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, Oswiecim, Malopolskie, Poland (murdered in gas chamber)
- Hans Krása was born on November 30, 1899 in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]. He was a composer, known for Brundibar! (1995), Der vorletzte Akt (1965) and The Music of Terezin (1994). He died on October 18, 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, Oswiecim, Malopolskie, Poland.
- Along with fellow composers Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas and Gideon Klein, Krása was taken to Auschwitz.
- In 1927 he followed Zemlinsky to Berlin, where he was introduced to Albert Roussel.
- Brundibár, a children's opera based on a play by Aristophanes, was the last work Krása completed before he was arrested by the Nazis on 10 August 1942.
- Krása, whose primary influences were Mahler, Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, also felt an affinity with French music, especially the group of composers known as Les Six and made a number of trips to France to study under Roussel whilst he lived in Berlin. Krása eventually returned, homesick, to Prague to resume his old job as a répétiteur at the Neues Deutsches Theater.
- The awareness of the uniqueness of Krasa's music is felt all the more so today, as his compositions have become known in recent years through increasing performances, recordings and publications of his scores.
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