Hanns Eisler
Encyclopedia
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...
.
Family background
Eisler was born in LeipzigLeipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy. In 1901 the family moved to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
.
His sister was Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer was a German Communist, a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918. According to secret information declassified in 2010, she was a key agent of the American intelligence service known as "The Pond."-Life and work:Born in Leipzig, Ruth Fischer was the daughter of the...
(Elfriede Eisler), a leader of the German Communist Party (KPD) during the 1920s, author of several books, and from 2010, confirmed to have been a CIA spy.
His brother was the journalist and Communist Gerhart Eisler
Gerhart Eisler
Gerhart Eisler was a German politician. Along with his sister Ruth Fischer, he was a very early member of the Austrian German Communist Party and then a prominent member of the Communist Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic...
, who was believed to be a major Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
agent operating under the cover name of Hans Berger. Louis Budenz, a former managing editor of the Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
, called him in a speech in the fall of 1946 "the Number One Communist in the U.S.". Time Magazine wrote of him, "He turned up in China, charged with purging the party of spies and dissidents, sent so many men to their deaths that he was known as 'The Executioner'".
Early years and Bertolt Brecht
During World War IWorld 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...
Hanns Eisler served as a front-line soldier in the Austro-Hungarian
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
army and was wounded several times in combat. Returning to Vienna after Austria's defeat, he studied from 1919 to 1923 under Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
. Eisler was the first of Schoenberg's disciples to compose in the twelve-tone
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
or serial
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
technique. He married Charlotte Demant in 1920; they separated in 1934.
In 1925 Eisler moved to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
—then a hothouse of experimentation in music, theater, film, art and politics. There he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
and became involved with the November Group. In 1928, he taught at the Marxist Worker's School in Berlin and his son Georg Eisler
Georg Eisler
Georg Eisler was an Austrian painter from the school of Oskar Kokoschka who lived from 1928 to 1998. His father Hanns Eisler was a composer and his mother Charlotte Eisler, née Demant a well-known singer and music teacher....
, who would grow up to become an important painter, was born.
His music became increasingly oriented towards political themes and, to Schoenberg's dismay, more "popular" in style with influences drawn from jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
. At the same time, he drew close to Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, whose own turn towards Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
happened at about the same time. The collaboration between the two artists lasted for the rest of Brecht's life.
In 1929, Eisler composed the song cycle Zeitungsausschnitte, Op. 11. The piece is dedicated to Margot Hinnenberg-Lefebre. Though not written in the twelve-tone technique, the piece was perhaps the forerunner of a musical art style later known as "News Items" – musical compositions that parodied a newspaper's content and style, or that included lyrics lifted directly from newspapers, leaflets, magazines, and other written media of the day. Eisler's piece parodies a newspaper's layout and content, with songs in the cycle given titles similar to headlines. The piece offers evidence of Eisler's socialist leanings, as its lyrics indicate the struggles of ordinary Germans who, after World War I, encountered hardship.
Eisler also wrote music for several Brecht plays, including The Decision
The Decision
The Decision , also known as The Measures Taken, is a Lehrstück by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Written in collaboration with Slatan Dudow and the composer Hanns Eisler, it consists of eight sections in prose and unrhymed, irregular verse, with six major songs...
(1930), The Mother
The Mother (play)
The Mother is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. It is based on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name.It was written in collaboration with Hanns Eisler, Slatan Dudow and Günter Weisenborn from 1930–31 in prose dialogue with unrhymed irregular free verse and ten initial...
(1932) and Schweik in the Second World War
Schweik in the Second World War
Schweik in the Second World War is a play by German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht. It was written by Brecht in 1943 while in exile in California, and is a sequel to the 1923 novel The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek. It is set in Prague and on the Russian Front during World War II...
(1957). They also collaborated on protest songs that intervened in the political turmoil of Weimar Germany
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
in the early 1930s. Their Solidarity Song became a popular militant anthem sung in street protests and public meetings throughout Europe, and their Ballad of Paragraph 218 was the world's first song protesting laws against abortion. Brecht-Eisler songs of this period tended to look at life from "below"—from the perspective of prostitutes, hustlers, the unemployed and the working poor. He worked with Brecht and the director Slatan Dudow
Slatan Dudow
Slatan Theodor Dudow was a Bulgarian born film director and screenwriter who made a number of films in the Weimar Republic and East Germany....
on the film Kuhle Wampe
Kuhle Wampe
Kuhle Wampe is a 1932 German feature film about unemployment and left wing politics in the Weimar Republic. The script was conceived and written by Bertolt Brecht...
which was banned by the Nazis in 1933.
In exile
After 1933, Eisler's music and Brecht's poetry were banned by the Nazi Party. Both artists fled, first to MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where The Decision
The Decision
The Decision , also known as The Measures Taken, is a Lehrstück by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Written in collaboration with Slatan Dudow and the composer Hanns Eisler, it consists of eight sections in prose and unrhymed, irregular verse, with six major songs...
was produced and staged. Eventually, Eisler and Brecht sought refuge in the United States, along with other exiles fleeing Nazi Germany.
In New York City, Eisler taught composition at the New School and wrote experimental chamber and documentary music. Moving shortly before World War II to Los Angeles, he composed several Hollywood film scores, two of which—Hangmen Also Die! and None but the Lonely Heart—were nominated for Oscars. Also working on Hangmen Also Die! was Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, who wrote the story along with director Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
.
In 1947, he wrote the book Composing for the Films with Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
. In several chamber and choral compositions of this period, Eisler returned to the twelve-tone method he had abandoned in Berlin. His Fourteen Ways of Describing the Rain—composed for Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
's 70th birthday celebration—is considered a masterpiece of the genre.
Eisler's two most notable works of the 1930s and 40s were the monumental Deutsche Sinfonie (1935–57)—a choral symphony in eleven movements based on poems by Brecht and Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone was the pseudonym of Secondino Tranquilli, an Italian author and politician.-Early life and career:...
—and a cycle of art songs published as the Hollywood Songbook (1938–43). With lyrics by Brecht, Eduard Mörike
Eduard Mörike
Eduard Friedrich Mörike was a German Romantic poet.-Biography:Mörike was born in Ludwigsburg. His father was Karl Friedrich Mörike , a district medical councilor; his mother was Charlotte Bayer...
, Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...
and Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
, it established Eisler's reputation as one of the twentieth century's great composers of German lied
Lied
is a German word literally meaning "song", usually used to describe romantic songs setting German poems of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf...
er.
The House investigation
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. He was one of the first artists placed on the Hollywood blacklist
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...
by the movie studio
Movie studio
A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
bosses. In two interrogations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
, the composer was accused of being "the Karl Marx of music" and the chief Soviet agent in Hollywood. Among his accusers was his sister Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer was a German Communist, a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918. According to secret information declassified in 2010, she was a key agent of the American intelligence service known as "The Pond."-Life and work:Born in Leipzig, Ruth Fischer was the daughter of the...
, who also testified before the House Committee that her other brother, Gerhart, was a major Communist agent. The Communist press denounced her as a "German Trotskyite." Among the works that Eisler composed for the Communist Party was the "Comintern March", "The Comintern calls you / Raise high Soviet banner / In steeled ranks to battle / Raise sickle and hammer."
His supporters
Eisler's supporters—including his friend Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
and the composers Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
and Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
—organized benefit concerts to raise money for his defense fund, but he was deported early in 1948.
Folksinger Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
protested the composer's deportation in his lyrics for "Eisler on the Go"—recorded fifty years later by Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg , better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes...
and Wilco
Wilco
Wilco is an American alternative rock band based in Chicago, Illinois. The band was formed in 1994 by the remaining members of alternative country group Uncle Tupelo following singer Jay Farrar's departure. Wilco's lineup has changed frequently, with only singer Jeff Tweedy and bassist John...
on the 1998 Mermaid Avenue
Mermaid Avenue
Mermaid Avenue is a 1998 album of previously unheard lyrics written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie, put to music written and performed by British singer Billy Bragg and the American band Wilco. The project was organized by Guthrie's daughter, Nora Guthrie. Mermaid Avenue was released on the...
album. In the song, an introspective Guthrie asked himself what he would do if called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, "I don't know what I'll do, / I don't know what I'll do / Eisler's on the come and go / and I don't know what I'll do."
On departing from America
On 26 March 1948, Eisler and his wife departed from LaGuardia AirportLaGuardia Airport
LaGuardia Airport is an airport located in the northern part of Queens County on Long Island in the City of New York. The airport is located on the waterfront of Flushing Bay and Bowery Bay, and borders the neighborhoods of Astoria, Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst. The airport was originally...
flying to Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. Before he left he read a statement:
"I leave this country not without bitterness and infuriation. I could well understand it when in 1933 the Hitler bandits put a price on my head and drove me out. They were the evil of the period; I was proud at being driven out. But I feel heart-broken over being driven out of this beautiful country in this ridiculous way."
In East Germany
Eisler returned to Germany and settled in East BerlinEast Berlin
East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...
. Back in East Germany, he composed the national anthem
Auferstanden aus Ruinen
' was the national anthem of East Germany during its existence from 1949 to 1990.-History:...
of the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
, a cycle of cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
-style songs to satirical poems by Kurt Tucholsky
Kurt Tucholsky
Kurt Tucholsky was a German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel. Born in Berlin-Moabit, he moved to Paris in 1924 and then to Sweden in 1930.Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of...
, and incidental music for theater, films and television. His most ambitious project of the period was a modern opera on the Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
theme. The libretto, which he published in 1952, portrayed Faust as an indecisive person who betrayed the cause of the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
by not joining the German Peasants' War
German Peasants' War
The German Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, 1524–1526. At its height in the spring and summer of 1525, the conflict involved an estimated 300,000 peasants: contemporary estimates put the dead at 100,000...
. This interpretation was attacked by the official GDR press and even by Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 , he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany and later in the early development and...
and was refused authorization by a cultural commission summoned specially for the case by the Berlin Academy of Arts. All of these disapproved of the negative depiction of Faust as a renegade and accused the work of being "a slap in the face of German national feeling" (Neues Deutschland
Neues Deutschland
Neues Deutschland is a national German daily newspaper. It was the official party newspaper of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany , which governed the German Democratic Republic , and as such served as one of the party's most important organs...
) and of having "formalistically deformed one of the greatest works of our German poet Goethe" (Ulbricht). Disheartened, Eisler stopped work on the music for the opera and it was never completed. Ironically, less than five years after his deportation from the United States, Eisler was again forced to testify in hearings where his political loyalty was questioned. Although he continued to work as a composer and to teach at the East Berlin conservatory, the gap between Eisler and the cultural functionaries of East Germany grew wider in the last decade of his life. During this period, he befriended musician Wolf Biermann
Wolf Biermann
Karl Wolf Biermann is a German singer-songwriter and former East German dissident.-Early life:Biermann's father, who worked on the Hamburg docks, was a German Jew and a member of the German Resistance....
, whose critical attitude towards the GDR government later led to exile in West Germany.
Eisler collaborated with Brecht until the latter's death in 1956. He never recovered completely from his friend's demise and his remaining years were marred by depression and declining health. He died of a heart attack (his second) in East Berlin and is buried near Brecht in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery.
Compositions
- 1918: Gesang des Abgeschiedenen ("Die Mausefalle" (after Christian MorgensternChristian MorgensternChristian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on March 7, 1910...
); "Wenn es nur einmal so ganz still wäre" (after Rainer Maria RilkeRainer Maria RilkeRené Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
) - 1919: Drei Lieder (Li-Tai-Po, Klabund); "Sehr leises Gehn im lauen Wind"; "Spartakus"
- 1922: Allegro moderato and Waltzes; Allegretto and Andante for Piano
- 1923: DivertimentoDivertimentoDivertimento is a musical genre, with most of its examples from the 18th century. The mood of the divertimento is most often lighthearted and it is generally composed for a small ensemble....
; Four Piano Pieces - 1925: Eight Piano Pieces
- 1926: Tagebuch des Hanns Eisler (Diary of Hanns Eisler); 11 Zeitungsausschnitte; Ten Lieder; Three Songs for Men's Chorus (after Heinrich HeineHeinrich HeineChristian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
) - 1928: "Drum sag der SPD ade"; "Lied der roten Matrosen" ("Song of the Red Sailors", with Erich WeinertErich WeinertErich Bernhard Gustav Weinert was a German Communist writer and a member of the Communist Party of Germany .-Biography:...
); Pantomime (with Béla BalázsBéla Balázs----Béla Balázs , born Herbert Bauer, was a Hungarian-Jewish film critic, aesthete, writer and poet....
); "Kumpellied"; "Red Sailors' Song"; "Couplet vom Zeitfreiwilligen"; "Newspaper's Son"; "Auch ein Schumacher (verschiedene Dichter)"; "Was möchst du nicht" (from Des Knaben Wunderhorn); "Wir sind das rote Sprachrohr" - 1929: Tempo der Zeit (Tempo of Time) for chorus and small orchestra, op. 16; Six Lieder (after Weinert, Weber, Jahnke and Vallentin); "Lied der Werktätigen" ("Song of the Working People"; with Stephan Hermlin)
- 1930: "Die Maßnahme" ("The Measure", Lehrstück, text of Bertolt BrechtBertolt BrechtBertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
), op. 20; Six Ballads (after Weber, Brecht, and Walter MehringWalter MehringWalter Mehring was a German author and one of the most prominent satirical authors in the Weimar Republic. He was banned during the Third Reich, and fled the country.-Biographical:...
); Four Ballads (after B. TravenB. TravenB. Traven was the pen name of a German novelist, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. A rare certainty is that B...
, Kurt TucholskyKurt TucholskyKurt Tucholsky was a German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel. Born in Berlin-Moabit, he moved to Paris in 1924 and then to Sweden in 1930.Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of...
, Wiesner-Gmeyner, and Arendt); Suite No. 1, op. 23 - 1931: "Lied der roten Flieger" (after Kirsanow); Four Songs (after Frank, Weinert) from the film Niemandsland'; Three Songs from the film Kuhle Wampe (texts of Brecht); "Ballad of the Pirates", "Song of Mariken", Four Ballads (with Bertolt Brecht); Suite No. 2, op. 24 ("Niemandsland"); Three Songs after Erich Weinert; "Das Lied vom vierten Mann" ("The Song of the Fourth Man"); "Streiklied" ("Strike Song"); Suite No. 3, op. 26 ("Kuhle Wampe")
- 1932: "Ballad of the Women and the Soldiers" (with Brecht); "Song from the Urals" (after Tretyakov); Seven Piano Pieces; Kleine Sinfonie (Little Symphony); Suite No. 4, op. 30 ("Die Jugend hat das Wort")
- 1934: "Einheitsfrontlied" ("United Front Song"); "Saarlied" ("Saar Song"), "Lied gegen den Krieg" ("Song Against War"), "Ballade von der Judenhure Marie Sanders" ("Ballad of the Jews' Whore Marie Sanders"), Songs from Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe; "Sklave, wer wird dich befreien" ("Slave, who will liberate you"; with Brecht); "California Ballad"; Six Pieces; Prelude and Fugue on B–A–C–HBACH motifIn music, the BACH motif is the motif, a succession of notes important or characteristic to a piece, B flat, A, C, B natural. In German musical nomenclature, in which the note B natural is written as H and the B flat as B, it forms Johann Sebastian Bach's family name...
(string trio) - 1935: "Die Mutter" ("The Mothers", with Brecht; cantata)
- 1935: Lenin Requiem for solo voices, chorus and orchestra
- 1937: "Friedenssong" ("Peace Song", after Petere); "Kammerkantaten" ("Chamber Cantatas"); Ulm 1592; "Bettellied "("Begging Song", with Brecht); "Lenin Requiem" (with Brecht)
- 1938: Cantata on Herr Meyers' First Birthday; String Quartet; Theme and Variations "Der lange Marsch"
- 1939: Nonet No. 1
- 1940: Chamber Symphony; Suite for Septet No. 1
- 1940/41: Film Music to The Forgotten Village
- 1940/41: Nonet No. 2
- 1941: Woodburry-Liederbüchlein (Woodbury Songbook, 20 Songs); "14 Arten" (for the 70th birthday of Arnold SchoenbergArnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
) - 1942: "Hollywood-Elegien" ("Hollywood Elegies"; with Brecht) in the Hollywooder Liederbuch (Hollywood Songbook)
- 1943: Film music for Hangmen Also Die!; Piano Sonata No. 3
- 1943: Songs to "Schweik in the Second World War"; "Deutsche Misere" (with Brecht)
- 1946: "Glückliche Fahrt" ("Prosperous Voyage", after Goethe); Incidental music to The Life of Galileo
- 1946: Film score for A Scandal in ParisA Scandal in ParisA Scandal in Paris is a fictionalized 1946 biographical film, directed by Douglas Sirk and starring George Sanders. It depicts the life of Eugène François Vidocq, a French criminal who reformed and became a famous French prefect of police during the Napoleonic era.-Plot:The rogue who would later...
- 1947: Septet No. 2
- 1947: music for The Woman on the BeachThe Woman on the BeachThe Woman on the Beach is a film noir directed by Jean Renoir, released by RKO Radio Pictures, and starring Robert Ryan, Joan Bennett, and Charles Bickford.-Overview:...
, film directed by Jean RenoirJean RenoirJean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s... - 1948: "Lied über die Gerechtigkeit" ("Song of Justice", after W. Fischer)
- 1949: Rhapsody; "Lied über den Frieden" ("Song about Peace"); National Anthem of the DDR (text by Becher); "Treffass"
- 1950: "Mitte des Jahrhunderts" (after Becher); Four Lieder on Die Tage der Commune; Children's Songs (with Brecht)
- 1952: "Das Lied vom Glück" ("The Song of Happiness"; after Brecht); "Das Vorbild" (after Goethe)
- 1955: Night and Fog (film)Night and Fog (film)Night and Fog is a 1955 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was...
, Songs for the film Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti; "Im Blumengarten" ("In the flower garden"); "Die haltbare Graugans"; Three Lieder after Brecht; "Bel Ami" - 1956: Vier Szenen auf dem Lande ("Four Scenes from the Country", after Erwin Strittmatter); Children's Songs (after Brecht); "Fidelio" (after Beethoven)
- 1957: Deutsche SinfonieDeutsche SinfonieDeutsche Sinfonie, Op. 50, is a composition for soloists, chorus and orchestra by Hanns Eisler. Despite the title, it is considered to be more in the style of a cantata than a symphony...
(after texts of Bertolt BrechtBertolt BrechtBertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
and Ignazio Silone); Bilder aus der Kriegsfibel; "Die Teppichweber von Kujan-Bulak" ("The Carpetweavers of Kujan-Bulak", with Brecht); "Lied der Tankisten" (text by Weinert); "Regimenter gehn"; "Marsch der Zeit" ("March of Time", after Mayakovsky); Three Lieder (after Mayakovsky and Peter Hacks); "Sputnik-Lied" ("Sputnik Song", text of Kuba) - 1958: "Am 1. Mai" ("To May Day", with Brecht)
- 1962: "Ernste Gesänge" ("Serious Songs"), seven Lieder after Friedrich HölderlinFriedrich HölderlinJohann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...
, Viertel, Giacomo LeopardiGiacomo LeopardiGiacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist...
, Richter, and Stephan Hermlin
External links
- The International Hanns Eisler Society
- EislerMusic.com
- Orel Foundation Hanns Eisler – biography, bibliography, works and discography.
- Hanns Eisler Project
- Georg Eisler Gallery
- Eisler FBI File
- The American Symphony Orchestra is scheduled to perform the US Premiere of Eisler's Goethe Rhapsody (1949) in 2009