Hans Eisler

Hans Eisler , born the July 6th 1898 with Leipzig, dead the September 6th 1962 with East Berlin, was a musical theorist and type-setter politically committed germano-Austrian.

Years of youth and musical formation

Hans Eisler was the third child of the philosopher and independent scientist ( Privatgelehrter ) Rudolf Eisler and of Ida Maria, born Fischer. His/her brother, Gerhart Eisler, was Stalinist communist politician. His/her Elfriede sister played an eminent role in the creation of the Austrian Communist party then German Communist party (KPD) under the pseudonym militant Ruth Fischer. She was opposed since 1925, with Stalinism.

In 1901, the career of Rudolf Eisler led the Eisler family to leave Leipzig for Vienna. Hans Eisler grows in a middle-class environment where the music and the literature played a central role. In 1916, Hans Eisler was enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army, in a school of reserve officers close to Prague and then, until 1918, he became soldier in a Hungarian regiment. Several musical compositions go back to this period (i.e. Oratorium Gegen den Krieg ). Returned in Vienna after the defeat, he studied of 1919 to 1923 with Arnold Schönberg. Eisler was the first pupil of Schönberg which composed by adopting the technique of the twelve tons (dodecaphonic music). It dedicated to Schönberg its Sonate for piano op.1 .

Berlin. Committed art

As of its childhood Hans Eisler was attracted by the communist ideals (partly under the influence of his/her sister and its brother) and this dash will mark its musical creation. It is starting from its installation in Berlin into 1925 that this tendency towards a resolutely political music was confirmed. Berlin then crosses a golden age for arts and the letters and becomes a crucible of experimentation in all the artistic and political fields while years 1925-1929 mark the return to a prosperity and a relative stability in Germany. Hans Eisler moves away from the sacrilized musical vision of Arnold Schönberg and from the post-romanticism which he judges embourgeoized . It is directed towards more popular musical forms, influenced by the Jazz and the cabaret.

Eisler approached the German Communist party KPD but will be never member of the party. It is in this context that its collaboration with Bertolt Brecht itself will begin Marxist and fellow traveller , collaboration which will cease only with the death of this last in 1956. Hans Eisler wrote the music of several parts of Brecht: Die Massname , Die Mutter (according to a novel of Maxime Gorki of 1907), Galileo , Furcht und Elend of Dritten Reiches , " Die heilige Johanna"

Eisler and Brecht also produced political songs which played a part in the agitated years of the Weimar Republic at the beginning of the Années 1930. Thus, the Solidaritätslied (1932) of first talking film proletarian Kuhle Wampe . It met in 1933 in Paris the actors of the " group; Octobre" , and put in music two poems of Jacques Prévert: " History of the cheval" and " Life of famille".

Exile in the USA, 1933-1948

Since 1933, the music of Eisler and the poetry of Brecht were banished by the party Nazi. Both belonged to the anti-nazi generation which found refuge in the United States.

Eisler taught with the New School University in New York and composed of the experimental chamber music. Little before the beginning Second world war, it moved in Hollywood and composed the music of many films ( Hangmen Also Die of Fritz Lang, None drank the Lonely Heart , The 400 Million of Joris Ivens…)

He wrote in 1947 the work Composing for the Films in collaboration with Theodor Adorno. Eisler took again the dodecaphonic technique (an example is its composition Fourteen ways off describing the Rain in the honor of the 70e birthday of Arnold Schönberg).

Its two essential works of these years are monumental the Deutsche Sinfonie (symphony choral society in 11 movements based on poems of Brecht and Ignazio Silone, started in 1935, and which will be finished only in 1958) and a cycle of melodies Hollywooder Liederbuch (1942-43).

Berlin Is (1948-1962)

Since the death of Roosevelt (April 1945), the United States is under the influence of anti-Soviet tendencies encouraged by Truman and indirectly by the concept of iron curtain of Churchill.

Hans Eisler (whose Gerhart brother was shown by J. Edgar Hoover, chief of FBI, to be a central figure of Soviet espionage) was worried by the Commission of the not-American activities. After two hearings, Eisler was shown to be Karl Marx of the music and the Soviet agent in Hollywood. It was, like many artists like Brecht or Chaplin, constrained to leave the United States in 1948. His/her Gerhart brother was condemned to 3 years of prison but was released in bond, then escaped from the United States and joined East Germany.

Hans Eisler settled in Berlin East. It continued to compose, to teach with the academy Hochschule für Musik Hans Eisle . It composed the national anthem Auferstanden aus Ruinen of the German Democratic republic (GDR). It composed the music of the film Nuit and fog of Alain Resnais in 1954. Its most ambitious project, a modern opera on the topic of Faust, was attacked by the communist censure. Its political honesty was blamed at the time of a series of hearings. This political climate and the death of Brecht in 1956 obscured its last years. He died in 1962 and is buried close to Brecht to the cemetery of Dorotheenstadt .

Arrangement

With Karl Rankl, Hans Eisler composed an arrangement for chamber orchestra of the symphony n° 7 of Anton Bruckner.

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