About Our Department’s Namesake
Only few exceptional personalities have ever, in their life stories, demonstrated music-making’s broad diversity and limitless nature as impressively as did the violinist Alma Rosé (3 November 1906 in Vienna – 4 April 1944 in Auschwitz II-Birkenau). Childhood influences in the musical household of the Rosé-Mahler family, instrumental training under Otakar Ševčík as well as her own father Arnold Rosé (himself concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic), and a Viennese concert debut in the Musikverein’s Golden Hall that was hailed by the international press all testify to how Alma Rosé initially set out upon what could be considered a classic career trajectory for a violin soloist and chamber musician. Even so, she soon broke out of traditional patterns and structures—going on to perform in contexts such as the revue Alles aus Liebe by Karl Farkas, Ernst Marischka, and Hubert Marischka as well as make solo appearances at prominent variété venues such as Vienna’s Ronacher. She then spent the 1930s mounting one successful European tour after another as the founder and leader of the women’s orchestra Wiener Walzermädeln.
With Germany’s introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, however, the scope of action enjoyed by the Wiener Walzermädeln—whose membership also included other Jewish musicians aside from Alma Rosé herself—began to narrow. 1938 then saw Alma Rosé become subject to persecution as a so-called “full Jew” in her home country, as well, in the wake of Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany. Following a successful escape from Vienna to London, where she initially attempted to build a new musical existence in exile together with her father, insufficient opportunities for gainful employment and the attendant financial difficulties forced her to move on to the Netherlands for concert engagements in late 1939.
Following Germany’s subsequent occupation of the Netherlands, a renewed escape attempt failed—and Alma Rosé was ultimately deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 18 July 1943, where she survived the selection process to which new arrivals were subject. Having been recognized as a famous violinist, she was ordered by SS superintendent Maria Mandl to assume leadership of a women’s orchestra that had already been formed at the camp. In a place like Auschwitz, making music was nothing more than a survival strategy. But even so, witnesses to these events such as the cellist Anita Lasker Wallfisch still recall Alma Rosé’s unbreakable will to create something of artistic value even from the most meagre musical knowledge and abilities of various orchestra members and despite the entirely insufficient availability of instruments and sheet music. ”If we don’t play well, we’ll be gassed!” she has often been quoted as having said. Alma Rosé died in the Auschwitz infirmary on 4 April 1944, probably as a consequence of food poisoning.
Family and Networks
The artistic breadth of Alma Rosé’s music-related activities shatters any assumption of antagonism between her familial origins and social embeddedness in the realm of musical high culture and her activities at the fluid interfaces between the various genres of Viennese entertainment culture. Alma Rosé came from a family of artists that occupied a preeminent position in Vienna’s turn-of-the-century cultural life: she was the daughter of Arnold Rosé, who served as concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic and was also highly regarded for his activities as a chamber musician. Arnold had founded the successful Rosé Quartet together with his brother Eduard, who was later to assume the post of principal cellist in the orchestra of the Court Theatre in Weimar. On her mother’s side, Alma Rosé was the niece of Gustav Mahler. Alma’s brother, Alfred Rosé, managed to establish himself in particular as a conductor of operas, alongside which he also composed. Both generations of these affinally related families stand out for their members’ multifaceted careers as artists and educators in the fields of music, acting, and fine art.
The Rosé residence on Pyrkergasse was a place of family music-making but also very open to Vienna’s broader cultural circles. Alma’s mother Justine Rosé regularly held salons where Alma, from her childhood onward, came into friendly and professional contact with the city’s cultural elite as a matter of course. Prominent musicians such as Rudolf Bing, Carl Flesch, Erica Morini, and Bruno Walter as well as the Korngold, Röntgen, and Rostal families, to name just a few, were among the Rosés’ everyday social relations and formed a stable network from which Alma Rosé would benefit even after going into exile in London and then Holland.
The print media of those days quite often treated the name “Rosé” as a seal of quality where artistic activities were concerned, thereby according special relevance to their existence as a musical family. Alma Rosé’s own Viennese concert debut, for which her father joined her onstage in an accompanying role, created quite a buzz: “One can think of no violin duet more beautiful than this one between father and daughter (Die Stunde, 18 Dec. 1926). It was also noted on occasion how being part of this family may have also represented a burden for the young violinist. Her artistic activities were always put in relation to the achievements of her relatives as well as—later on—her husband, the Czech violin virtuoso Váša Příhoda. When speaking about herself, however, Alma Rosé did express gratitude “to my father as a teacher and for the atmosphere of my parents’ home” (Neues Wiener Journal, 29 Jan. 1930).
The renaming of the mdw’s Department 17 as the “Alma Rosé Department of String Instruments, Guitar and Harp in Music Education” marks an important step toward honouring Alma Rosé in an appropriate manner. At the same time, Alma Rosé has also caught the interest of present-day musicological research: Anna Rendl and Bettina Schuster—doctoral students at the University of Vienna and the mdw, respectively—will be investigating Alma Rosé’s triumphs as a solo and ensemble artist and the relevance of the familial dimension in both the reception of the Rosés as a family of artists and the culture of remembrance that surrounds them.