Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) – Tribute/Hommage

You may already know about Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin…

The reluctance of the musician to think outside of his art is an exact description of the special feature of music.
Eisler was against
the psychological noise-music – a society which can itself organize thinking by means of machines can see less and less in the naïve spontaneity of a poet or a composer – the abomination of the sleekness, the oily filth… that flows from every channel in the West and the East

Two sites: Eisler Music & International Hanns Eisler Society

Three recent compilations of his songs include:
SUB ROSA (the great publisher): War & Exile
ECM: Eislermaterial
&
There’s Nothing Quite Like Money by Sylvia Anders

[Directors like Joris Ivens, Jean Renoir, Joseph Losey, Fritz Lang, and Alain Resnais were his partners in developing an alternative esthetic for Hollywood’s film music. Moreover, during his American exile many of his most important songs, works for orchestra, and chamber music were written. Like Joseph Losey and Charlie Chaplin, Eisler was forced [by the House Unamerican Activities Committee; editor’s note] to leave the USA. As farewell, prominent American colleagues, among them Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, honored him with a farewell concert in New York.
In 1950 Eisler returned to Berlin, passing through Vienna. His enthusiasm for a “new Germany” (East Germany), however, quickly evaporated. A communist party campaign against his Faustus opera project lamed his creative powers. In 1954 his declaration favoring Schönberg’s twelve-tone technique aroused official resistance. The honors Eisler received as composer of the German Democratic Republic’s national anthem could not conceal the fact that some of his principal works were hardly performed. The Ernste Gesänge (Serious songs) composed shortly before his death are a sobering summation of his experiences. Source: Universal Edition ]

Über den Selbstmord/On Suicide (one of many Brecht/Eisler collaborations)

From Jewish Musical Modernism, Old and New, Volume 1 edited by Philip V. Bohlman.
In diesem Lande und in dieser Zeit
Dürfte es trübe Abende nicht geben,
Auch hohe Brücken über die Flüsse,
Selbst die Stunden zwischen Nacht und Morgen
Und der ganze Winterzeit dazu,
Das ist gefärlich.
Denn Angesicht dieses Elends
Werfen die Menschen in einem Augenblick
Ihr unerträgliches Leben fort.

In this land and during these times
There may not be gloomy evenings,
Also high bridges over rivers,
Even the hours between night and morning
As well as the entire wintertime,
All this is dangerous.
For because of this suffering
People throw away their unbearable lives
In only a moment

Score for Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) Part 1 of 3

Kinderhymne/Hymne des Enfants with/avec Bertolt Brecht

Spare neither charm nor effort,
Neither passion nor reason
To make a good Germany flourish
As any other good land.
…
And it appears to us to be the best
Just as theirs appears to other peoples.

A 1941 Score for Rain by Joris Ivens

Solidaritätslied (Solidarity Song)

Sturm Suite 1957

Supply and Demand/Angebot und Nachfrage (1931)

Auferstanden aus Ruinen (an excerpt from “The Hanns Eisler Story” [1995])

Deutsches Miserere

McCarthy hearings

Hanns Eisler sings/singt das Lied von der belebenden Wirkung des Geldes

The Serious Song/Ernste Gesänge (1962)

Adapted from Hölderlin:
Come! Into the open, friend!
True that it’s only shining a little today
Here below, and the sky hems us closely in.
Today it is dull, the paths and streets are slumbering.
It seems as if it were the age of lead.
For our singing is nothing powerful, but it belongs to life.
The swallows are coming too.
Always a few, before a summer in the country.
May the carpenter pass sentence from the rooftop:
We, as far as we would could, have done our part.

(Bonus by Brecht)
„Epistel über den Selbstmord“
Sich selbst zu morden
Ist eine seichte Sache.
Man kann darüber mit seiner Waschfrau plaudern
Mit einem Freund das Für und Wider erörtern.
Ein gewisses Pathos, das lockt
Sollte man vermeiden.
Obwohl das durchaus kein Dogma zu sein braucht.
Aber besser scheint mit doch

Man habe es satt, die Wäsche zu wechseln, besser noch:
Die Frau sei einem untreu gewesen
(Das zieht beidenen, die von derlei ein Erstaunen gesetzt werden
Und ist nicht zu großartig.)
Jedenfalls
Sollte es nicht aussehen