{"id":874,"date":"2017-11-19T00:17:13","date_gmt":"2017-11-19T05:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=874"},"modified":"2017-11-19T00:17:13","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T05:17:13","slug":"arnold-schoenbergs-musical-response-to-fdr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2017\/11\/arnold-schoenbergs-musical-response-to-fdr.html","title":{"rendered":"Arnold Schoenberg&#8217;s Musical Response to FDR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"webkit-fake-url:\/\/14E2F56F-CA15-44EC-B59A-AF9DF5BCB72C\/219177_5_.jpg\" alt=\"219177_5_.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What kind of American was Arnold Schoenberg?<\/p>\n<p>In Los Angeles, a Jewish refugee from Hitler\u2019s Germany, he adopted English as his primary language. He watched The Lone Ranger on TV. For his children, he prepared peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches cut into animal shapes.<\/p>\n<p>Then Pearl Harbor was bombed. Schoenberg\u2019s <em>Ode to Napoleon<\/em>, in reaction to Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s declaration of war on Japan, is one of the most stirring musical responses to a world event ever conceived. It\u2019s the closing work on PostClassical Ensemble\u2019s \u201cMusic and Wartime\u201d concert on December 7 \u2013 Pearl Harbor Day &#8212; at the Washington National Cathedral:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"MUSIC IN WARTIME: December 7 Official Trailer\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sW2Nb1CGPVM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The same PostClassical Ensemble program of music composed during World War II includes Shostakovich\u2019s Piano Trio No. 2 (1944) and a selection of the <em>Hollywood Songs<\/em> composed by Hanns Eisler, setting unhappy poems by his fellow Los Angeles refugee Bertolt Brecht.<\/p>\n<p>Eisler had studied with Schoenberg in Vienna after front-line service in World War I. He made his name in Berlin during the 1920s and \u201830s as the preferred composer for workers\u2019 songs \u2013\u00a0<em>Kampflieder <\/em>(\u201csongs of struggle\u201d) \u2013 linked to a Workers-Singers Union with 400,000 members.<\/p>\n<p>With the coming of Hitler, Eisler fled to the US, where he attempted to help New York City\u2019s Composers\u2019 Collective foster a comparable proletarian song movement enlisting Aaron Copland, among others. This went nowhere and Eisler wound up in Los Angeles. Though he found employment as a film composer, another musical outcome \u2013 an expression of estrangement to set beside Schoenberg\u2019s Pearl Harbor patriotism &#8212; was the\u00a0<em>Hollywood<\/em>\u00a0<em>Songbook<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Of his American exile, Schoenberg wrote that he \u201ccame from one country into another . . . where my head can be erect, where kindness and cheerfulness is dominating, and where to live is a joy and to be an expatriate of another country is the grace of God. . . . I was driven into paradise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile Eisler was blacklisted and interrogated as the \u201cKarl Marx of Music.\u201d He was conspicuously deported in 1948. His response, also widely reported, read: \u201cI 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 heartbroken over being driven out of this beautiful country in this ridiculous way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In East Berlin, Eisler composed the national anthem for the German Democratic Republic. Though re-united with Brecht, he discovered himself ideologically suspect all over again. In effect, he is a composer who endured a condition of exile for most of his professional life.<\/p>\n<p>Schoenberg died in Los Angeles in 1951, Eisler in East Berlin in 1962.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; What kind of American was Arnold Schoenberg? In Los Angeles, a Jewish refugee from Hitler\u2019s Germany, he adopted English as his primary language. He watched The Lone Ranger on TV. For his children, he prepared peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches cut into animal shapes. Then Pearl Harbor was bombed. Schoenberg\u2019s Ode to Napoleon, in reaction to Franklin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-e6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":875,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions\/875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}