Henry Jolles
Encyclopedia
Henry Jolles born Heinz-Frederic Jolles, was a German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

 and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. Uprooted from his native Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 by the rise of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

, he spent his last quarter-century in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

.

Life

Jolles was born in Berlin to Dr. Oscar Jolles and his wife, Gertrude, née Sternberg. She, at least, was Jewish. The family evidently was prosperous; Oscar, who had received a degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 at Jena University in 1886, was president and majority owner of the large printing and publishing company H. Berthold AG, and near the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 the Kingdom of Württemberg
Kingdom of Württemberg
The Kingdom of Württemberg was a state that existed from 1806 to 1918, located in present-day Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was a continuation of the Duchy of Württemberg, which came into existence in 1495...

 would honor him with the Wilhelmkreuz, a recently-created civilian decoration for merit in the war effort, for his management of that company’s metals business.
Henry Jolles at age six played for the celebrated virtuoso and composer Eugen d’Albert, who subsequently greatly influenced the boy’s musical development. After studying piano with Artur Schnabel
Artur Schnabel
Artur Schnabel was an Austrian classical pianist, who also composed and taught. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura...

 and Edwin Fischer
Edwin Fischer
Edwin Fischer was a Swiss classical pianist and conductor. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, particularly in the traditional Germanic repertoire of such composers as J. S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert...

 and composition with Paul Juon
Paul Juon
Paul Juon was a Germanised Russian composerHe was born in Moscow, where his father was an insurance official. His mother was German, and he went to a German school in Moscow. He entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1889, where he studied violin with Jan Hřímalý and composition with Anton Arensky...

 and, privately, with Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

, Jolles began to develop a successful performing career in the 1920s. His academic career also flourished, bringing appointment as professor at the Cologne Music Academy in 1928, at which point he moved from Berlin-Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, named after Queen consort Sophia Charlotte...

 to Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

.

The ascendency of the Nazis brought an abrupt halt to this progress and several years of disruptions. In 1933, the regime directed Jolles's dismissal from his Academy position, and by 1934 Jolles had moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 to escape persecution. There, he had some success in re-establishing his performing career and, in 1940 or 1941, married Elisabeth Henriette Sauty de Chalon, but with the fall of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...

 in 1940, Jolles came back into danger from the German occupation. Luck was with him, however, as he received assistance from the American Varian Fry
Varian Fry
Varian Mackey Fry was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped approximately 2,000 to 4,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.-Early life:...

. Jolles thereby secured an entry permit into Brazil and was able to flee France aboard a freighter from Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

 in 1942. Once in Brazil, he settled in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

 and changed his name from “Heinz” to “Henry.” His mother and sister died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943.

Jolles and his wife would remain residents of Brazil for the rest of their lives. Their sole child, a son named Olivier De Chalon Jolles, was born there in 1945. In 1952, fellow expatriate Hans-Joachim Koellreutter
Hans-Joachim Koellreutter
Hans-Joachim Koellreutter was a composer, teacher and musicologist...

 invited Henry Jolles to accept a teaching position at the Escola Livre de Música in São Paulo. There his students included composer Henrique de Curitiba
Henrique de Curitiba
Zbigniew Henrique Morozowicz, known as Henrique de Curitiba , is a Brazilian composer of Polish descent...

. Jolles died in São Paulo in 1965; his wife died there on 26 March 1968.

Career

Jolles launched a successful career as a performer in the 1920s, earning a reputation as an accomplished performer of both classical and contemporary literature. Of particular note, in 1928 he performed the complete piano works of Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

 in a series of recitals at the University of Heidelberg. Upon fleeing Germany for France after 1933, Jolles met with some success in re-establishing his career, from 1935 to 1939 leading the concert society “La Sonata,” but the German invasion forced him to start yet again in Brazil. That disruption proved one too many; while he returned to touring in Europe in 1946 and in Germany in 1950, and around that time made long playing recordings for the American Haydn Society label, he was unable to recapture his earlier success.

The war was also destructive to his work as a composer. The sole survivor of his compositions predating 1933 is a fragment of a work he wrote jointly with Weill for four pianos. Music written after he arrived in Brazil, of course, did not suffer a similar fate. Among those works are piano pieces, a ballet based on Carmen, a sonata for violin and piano, and the song "Ultimo poema de Stefan Zweig,"; the last is based on Stefan Zweig’s
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...

"Letzte Gedicht," which the poet wrote on the occasion of his 60th birthday in November 1941.
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