This item is not available! This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Hanns Eisler. Individualist - Collectivist at the Jewish Museum Vienna 25 February 2009 – 12 July 2009 as part of the series Music in Transition.
Concept: Michael Haas, music curator
The included CD contains Eisler’s “Eine Deutsche Sinfonie” and a rare historical recording of “Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben“. Recorded 1940/42 & 1990s.

Hanns Eisler (1898- 1962) is the most controversial composer to come from turn of the century Vienna. He was a Schönberg pupil who rejected Schönberg's elitism and tried instead to create a communicative 'proletarian' avant-garde. He was the father of musical agitprop and composer of many iconic political fight-songs. Forced to leave Austria in 1933 as a Communist and to flee Europe as a Jew, he settled after years of homelessness in the United States, becoming a respected though unconventional composer for Hollywood films. The House of Un-American Activities removed him from the US in 1948 and placed him on their black-list making job-opportunities in Austria outside of the Soviet Sector impossible. Having composed the national anthem for the German Democratic Republic, he moved to East Berlin in 1949 subsequently becoming a wayward though ultimately reliable defender of the new State. In common with his most frequent collaborator Bertolt Brecht. he held on to his Austrian citizenship.