Lives cut short

Courageously fighting for one's country and honor - risking a hero's death along the way: it's long been the stuff of works for the stage. For many musicians sitting in European orchestra pits, this motif was part of their everyday working lives.

Compositions full of patriotism and pathos were big earners. However, most professional musicians at the time had no personal experience with war. The Franco-German War of 1870-71 had been over for decades.

Music paper at the front

When Kaiser Wilhelm II announced a general mobilization on August 1, 1914, in Berlin, Richard Strauss - then a star among German composers - had just celebrated his 50th birthday. Strauss, like his popular countryman Hans Pfitzner, then age 45, was too old to be deployed. But their Austrian colleague Arnold Schönberg, who would later become famous for his twelve-tone compositions, was drafted in 1915 at age 41. After being trained as a reserve officer, he carried out his service beginning in 1917 as a musician in a military ensemble.

Schönberg's pupil Hanns Eisler, who was called up to serve at age 18, brought music paper along to the front - just like his teacher and presumably any number of other composers. During pauses in the fighting, Eisler wrote down ideas for new works. But the horrors soldiers experienced in the trenches increasingly obstructed the creative process. Eisler's planned oratorio "Gegen den Krieg" (Against the War) remained a fragment.

'I must go to war'

When Anton Webern, a fellow pupil of Schönberg, learned he hadn't been drafted after the outbreak of the war, he registered as a volunteer. As early as 1914, he had written to Alban Berg - another Schönberg studen and member of the "Second Viennese School" of composition - "I must go to war. I must. I cannot stand it anymore."

In the course of his service, in which he trained recruits far from the front as an officer cadet through 1917, Webern became a pacifist. Berg also played a behind the scenes role, primarily working in the war ministry located in Vienna until 1918. Schönberg's various attempts at securing an early release for his protege remained fruitless. Berg later said, "I think you'll be hard pressed to find as avowed an anti-militarist as I am."

Like Berg and Webern, Maurice Ravel was thrilled with the prospect of going to war when it first unfolded. In 1915, the 40-year-old French composer got his wish. He served as a truck driver near Verdun. On account of the severely injured soldiers he transported from the front to the hinterland, Ravel, too, grew decidedly opposed to the war.

'For the fatherland…'

Like Ravel, the German avant-garde musician Paul Hindemith saw the events at the front up close and in person. Drafted in 1917 at age 22, he carried out his service as a drummer in a military music troop. Near Flanders, Hindemith experienced numerous air strikes during concerts and later recounted: "Blood, bodies riddled with holes, brains, a torn off horse's head, shattered bones - horrible!"

It's unclear whether Hindemith got to know Rudi Stephan at the conservatory in Frankfurt. Considered a very promising young composer, Stephan died on September 29, 1915, during battle in Galicia, age 28. Young talents George Butterworth and Ernest Farrar, both born in 1885, suffered similar fates. Buttworth died on August 5, 1916, in France at the Battle of the Somme. Farrar fell in battle on September 18, 1918, at Epehy.

French composer Alberic Magnard also met a tragic end. On September 3, 1914, he attempted to defend his property from approaching German soldiers and shot at them. They fired back, setting his house ablaze. Magnard died in the fire.

Injuries and trauma

Musicians and composers didn't just die in battle during the war. Some lives ended due to its effects and aftermath. The use of nerve gas in the war years, for example, was still claiming victims well into the 1920s. French composer Andre Caplet suffered gas poisoning at the front, rendering him unable to conduct. He died at age 47 in 1925.

Physical injuries were often accompanied by trauma, and men dealt with nightmares and nerve problems. Numerous musicians found they could no longer work and had to give up their jobs.

As a result of the musicians traumatized and lost to World War I, it would take years for European orchestras to recover.