This follows parts 1 and 2 in dealing with the crisis of Jewish identity by exile composers. In part 3, we take a case study of two composers as they set “The Song of Solomon”, known by one composer as “Song of Songs” and by the other as “Das Hohelied”.
With May 2019, exil.arte came into its third year, following its official public opening two years ago. I’ve already documented exil.arte with three previous article: The first was when we were given the… Continue reading
There is another important element that illustrates “inner return”: it’s the concept of “return”, when composers prominent as pre-war modernists return to old-fashioned concepts such as symphonies, sonatas and string quartets. Of these… Continue reading
Apologies are due for having neglected this blog for so many months. There has been an inordinate amount of activity at the exil.arte Centre with acquisitions of several important estates, a symposium which… Continue reading
As the old year closes and a new one starts, I look back at the progress that our exil.arte Centre has made and find myself acknowledging that having come a long way, we… Continue reading
The Shoah is by and large an area I try to avoid on this blog. For the purposes of the “Forbidden Music” blog, what was lost is more important than the manner of… Continue reading
(Richard Fuchs’ “Vom Jüdischen Schicksal”, written for the Kulturbund. World Premiere in Wellington New Zealand, 2014: Jenny Wollerman, Christian Thurston, Cantoris Choir, NZSM Orchestra, Donald Maurice – conductor) One of the most unsettling… Continue reading
Since posting this article on Heinsheimer, Univeral Edition has now published his history of their publishing house since its founding in 1901 to the death of Emil Hertzka and Austria’s annexation in 1938.… Continue reading
1897 was an eventful year for music in Vienna: Johannes Brahms died and Gustav Mahler took over the Imperial Opera; the anti-Semitic Karl Lueger was elected mayor; the Eleven-year-old Ernst Toch decided to… Continue reading
Except we now know that Winterberg’s part in this story wasn’t true. The truth is actually far more revealing of the Germany immediately after the war, and incredibly, of Germany today: Hans Winterberg was initially hijacked by a community of post-war refugees, who claimed him as one of their own. More recently, he was commandeered by contemporary German musicology. Both groups set great store in Winterberg being a victimised German Czech composer.
My article on Eric Zeisl from 2014 updated with its formerly corrupted audio files replaced.
In an article in the Los Angeles Times from October 2 1938,Rabbi Jacob Sonderling describes his meeting with Ernst Toch, Boris Morros, the actor Leopold Jessner and the story behind Toch’s setting of the Haggadah in his Cantata of the Bitter Herbs op. 65. Before this, however, Sonderling relates his desire to renew the music of the liturgy in a story that resonates with the idea of the prodigal son:
How and in what manner did secular composers thrown out of Europe after 1933 for being Jewish express Jewish identity in music?
The composer, former music critic and teacher, Walter Arlen is 100 years old and like any centenarian, he has many stories to tell. Unlike many centenarians, he has lived through more than a… Continue reading
A review of Eva Rieger’s excellent biography of the Wagnerian soprano Frida Leider
By allowing research to re-create the biotope of past creativity, we can increase understanding and appreciation of unfamiliar repertoire among artists and audiences.
Since posting this article six years ago, the discovery of Hans Gál has carried on at such a pace, that an update is required, demanding a broader focus than his opera Die heilige… Continue reading
Politics and the arts – what might it mean for the next decade?
This is a paper I was invited to give in Brussles earlier this month as part of a conference organised by “Forum Voix Etouffées” The destruction of Habsburg Austria would result in an… Continue reading
