About Hanns Eisler
He who only knows something about music knows nothing about that either
Hanns Eisler
by Dr. Albrecht Dümling
According to Theodor W. Adorno in 1927, Hanns Eisler was "actually the most prestigious among the young generation of Arnold Schönberg's pupils and one of the most talented of all young composers." Son of the philosopher Rudolf Eisler and born in Leipzig on 6th July, 1898, he moved to Vienna while still a child, and was taught there by Schönberg from 1918-23. In his prizewinning piano sonata op.1 and the multifaceted piano pieces op.3 he was already cutting his own path "between rebellious temper and tough tenderness" (Adorno). In Berlin from 1925 his work developed an even more independent profile. The song cycle "Zeitungsausschnitte" ("Newspaper Cuttings") op.11 combines, for example, the aphoristic harmonic techniques of the Second Viennese School with themes from everyday life in the big city. Like Hindemith and Weill, Eisler broke through the restrictions of traditional musical genres. He reached a wide spectrum of the public outside the concert hall with his compositions for new purposes, for experimental films, radio, workers' choirs, theatre, cabaret and music education. In 1928 the music critic H.H. Stuckenschmidt wrote about Eisler, "Amongst those alive today he is one of the most effective, decisive and clear thinkers. Because he successfully tries to justify music in the face of today's circumstances."
His musicality was matched by literary sensitivity and a sharp intelligence. These characteristics predestined him to work with Bert Brecht, a partnership which began in 1930 and ended with Brecht's death in 1956. With no other composer did Brecht pursue such a long-lasting and intense dialogue. Probably the only other comparable musical-literary symbiosis in the past century was that between Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss. Large choral works such as "Die Maßnahme", cantatas such as "Die Mutter", films such as "Kuhle Wampe" and "Hangmen also die" (directed by Fritz Lang) as well as numerous songs and incidental music (e.g. "Schweyk im zweiten Weltkrieg") were the result.
As a strong opponent of the Nazi regime, Hanns Eisler had to flee from Berlin in 1933. He organised the resistance in his European exile. He expressed his opinion in his writings and compositions, which range from small-scale piano pieces and songs to the large-scale "Deutsche Symphonie". His answer to the Nazis' cultural and educational policy was to acknowledge the contemporary arts and Arnold Schönberg's 12-tone technique. From 1938 Eisler lived in New York as a professor, then from 1942 in Los Angeles, where with Adorno and Brecht he developed new concepts in film music, both in theory and in practice.
Many of his most important songs, orchestral and chamber music compositions date from this period in California. Upon his enforced departure, prominent American colleagues, including Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, honoured him with a farewell concert.
He returned to Berlin in 1950 via Vienna. His eagerness to build up a socialist state in the eastern half of Germany was, however, very soon dampened. The campaign against his "Faustus" opera project crippled his creative energy and drove him into inner emigration. His open acknowledgment of Arnold Schönberg in 1954 also met with opposition. In spite of the official recognition he received as composer of the national anthem, his major works were seldom performed in the GDR. Shortly before his death, Eisler took stock in his "Ernste Gesänge" ("Serious Songs"). His name is associated with the contradictions of the twentieth century
Eisler's oeuvre comprises works in almost all combinations, but it was in his vocal works that his individuality was most strongly evident, as in the "Hollywood songbook", which the Viennese musicologist Erwin Ratz compared to the great song cycles of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf. The new ideas for performance practice which the composer introduced here, alongside his "Dialektik des musikalischen Materials" and his constant search for reason in music, are integral parts of a lifelong teaching career, which stretched from his youth in Vienna, via Berlin, New York and Los Angeles, to postwar Berlin, where from 1951 Hanns Eisler directed a composition masterclass at the Deutsche Akademie der Künste. He taught as a professor at the Academy of Music, which has borne his name since 1964.