PAVEL HAAS was inextricably linked with his native town of Brno, particularly with its artistic atmosphere between the two World Wars. He studied music first with Jaroslav Kunc and Vilem Petrzelka, but the overriding influence on Haas's artistic personality was Leos Janacek, who was his teacher at the master class of composition between 1920 and 1922. He was the only one of Janacek's pupils who mastered and further elaborated in a creative manner his mode of constructing compositions while developing his own musical language, combining seemingly disparate elements (eg. influences of Moravian folk songs and jazz). The Janacek style of motivic work brought Haas closer to Stravinsky with whom he shared a sense for the grotesque and humour, and who became Haas's model in terms of impressive modern instrumentation.
From the mid-1920s onwards Haas belonged to the group of Czech avant-garde composers, while his music lost nothing of its previous communicativeness. His compositions remained witty, brilliant, rhythmically rich, brimming over with humour as well as serious meditation. Haas was not a prolific composer, having a non-musical job until 1935, nevertheless each of his new compositions marked a step forward in his style. The highlights of the first period of his career included the orchestral Saddened Scherzo, op.5, Fata Morgana, op.6 and String Quartet No.2  "From the Monkey Mountains", op.7, compositions which attracted a good deal of attention. His wind Quintet, op.10 is a work in which Haas managed to attain a truly personal mode of expression and make his name famous abroad. This applies still more to his Suite for Piano, op.13 from 1935. Yet, the genuine highlight of his career is the three-act opera The Quack which had a successful first night and many further performances in Brno in 1938 and was awarded a prize by the Smetana Foundation. Another masterpiece by Haas from this period was The Quartet No.3, op.15 from 1938.
The rest of the life and career of Pavel Haas was strongly influenced by the German occupation of the Czech lands during World War II. At the time of his greatest artistic achievements Haas was excluded from public artistic life and following a three years imprisonment in Theresienstadt he perished in the Auschwitz death camp on October 17th 1944. His compositions written at that time, whether composed in the death camps or before, reflected the composer's endeavor not to succumb to the prevailing injustice and terror and to fight them with all available means. Haas then made ample use of the symbolism of medieval Czech chorales and elements of Moravian folk music (Suite for Oboe and Piano, Symphony, Four Songs to Words of Chinese Poetry). That Haas's compositions written at the Nazi death camps lost nothing of their artistic significance and contemporary relevance is corroborated by the success of the recently revived Four Songs to Words of Chinese Poetry and Studies for String Orchestra.