Robert Maria Haas (August 15, 1886, Prague - October 4, 1960, Vienna) Austrian musicologist.
At the beginning of his career with the Austrian national library, Haas was mostly interested in Baroque and Classical music. Later on, he was engaged by the newly formed International Bruckner Society to work on a complete edition of Anton Bruckner's Symphonies and Masses based on the original manuscripts bequeathed by the composer to the Vienna library.
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Between 1935 and 1944 Haas published editions of Bruckner's, Sixth (1935), Fifth (1935), First (1935), Fourth (1936 and 1944), Second, Eighth (1939) and Seventh (1944) symphonies. (A scholarly edition of Bruckner's Ninth symphony had already been produced in 1932 by Alfred Orel, and Haas's work on the Third symphony was destroyed during the war).
Haas's editions of Bruckner are controversial. Scholar Benjamin Korstvedt charges that in the Second, Eighth and Seventh symphonies Haas made changes to Bruckner's musical texts that "went beyond the limits of scholarly responsibility".[1]
For example, the Eighth Symphony existed in three versions: Bruckner's original manuscript of 1887, a revised manuscript of 1890 which incorporated suggestions from Schalk, Arthur Nikisch and others, and the first published edition of 1892 which went even further in the direction of the changes suggested by Bruckner's friends. Haas decided to make a composite edition based on the 1890 manuscript but adding in some passages from the 1887 version that he thought it a shame to lose: he also rewrote a brief passage himself.[1] Haas thus produced a text of the symphony that did not correspond to anything ever written or approved by Bruckner. A similar problem occurs in Haas's edition of the Second Symphony.[1] Some scholars have suggested that Haas was motivated to make these changes in order to assert copyright over his work.[2]
Another source of controversy is Haas's attachment to the Nazi party. Haas was a member of the Nazi party and did not hesitate to use the language of Naziism to garner approval for his work. He portrayed Bruckner as being a pure and simple country soul who had been corrupted by "cosmopolitan" and Jewish forces. This proved Haas's undoing, as after World War II he was removed from the Bruckner project and replaced by the more scholarly, if less inventive, Leopold Nowak who went on to produce new editions of all Bruckner's symphonies.
The great conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler criticized what he called Haas's "violation myth" in his private notebooks:
On the other hand noted Bruckner conductor Georg Tintner has described Haas as "brilliant" and calls Haas's edition of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony "the best" of all available versions.[4] Many conductors, including Herbert von Karajan, Bernard Haitink, Takashi Asahina and Günter Wand continued to prefer Haas's editions, even after the more scholarly Nowak editions became available.
Haas also edited some of the music of Hugo Wolf, Claudio Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, Christoph Willibald von Gluck's Don Juan, and other Baroque music. He also wrote about the Wiener Singspiel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.