As his family could not afford music lessons nor a piano, Eisler had to teach himself music.[6] At age 14, Eisler joined a socialist youth group.[7]
In 1917, one year after Eisler graduated high school, then 18-year-old Eisler was drafted into theAustro-Hungarian Army to fight duringWorld War I, where served as a front-line soldier. He found this time physically demanding, due to his poor health and small stature, and was injured several times in combat.
Returning to Vienna after Austria's defeat, he studied from 1919 to 1923 underArnold Schoenberg. Eisler was the first of Schoenberg's disciples to compose in thetwelve-tone orserial technique.
Eisler marriedCharlotte Demant in 1920; they separated in 1934. In 1925, he moved to Berlin, which was then a hothouse of experimentation in music, theater, film, art and politics. There he became an active supporter of theCommunist Party of Germany and became involved with theNovember Group. In 1928, he taught at the Marxist Workers' School in Berlin and his sonGeorg Eisler was born. His music became increasingly oriented towards political themes and, to Schoenberg's dismay, more "popular" in style with influences drawn fromjazz andcabaret. At the same time, he became close withBertolt Brecht, whose own turn towardsMarxism happened at about the same time. The collaboration between the two artists lasted for the rest of Brecht's life.[8]
In 1929, Eisler composed the song cycleZeitungsausschnitte, Op. 11. The work is dedicated to the singer Margot Hinnenberg-Lefebre.[9] Though not written in the twelve-tone technique, it was perhaps the forerunner of a musical art style later known as "News Items" (or perhaps better characterized as "news clippings") – musical compositions that parodied a newspaper's content and style, or that included lyrics lifted directly from newspapers, leaflets, magazines or other written media of the day. The cycle parodies a newspaper's layout and content, with the songs comprising it given titles similar to headlines. Its content reflects Eisler's socialist leanings, with lyrics memorializing the struggles of ordinary Germans subject to post–World War I hardships.[10]
Eisler wrote music for several Brecht plays, includingThe Decision (Die Maßnahme) (1930),The Mother (1932) andSchweik in the Second World War (1957). They also collaborated on protest songs that celebrated, and contributed to, the political turmoil ofWeimar Germany 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. From 1931 to 1932, he collaborated with Brecht and directorSlatan Dudow on the working-class filmKuhle Wampe.[11]
After 1933, Eisler's music and Brecht's poetry were banned by theNazi Party. Both artists went into exile. While Brecht settled inSvendborg, Denmark, Eisler traveled for a number of years, working inPrague,Vienna,Paris,London, andMoscow, and living briefly inSpain,Mexico, andDenmark. He made two visits to the United States, with speaking tours fromcoast tocoast.
In 1934, Eisler composed music for a song written by Brecht called the "United Front Song". The song was simple to follow to allow workers with limited musical training to be able to sing it.[12]
In 1938, Eisler finally managed to emigrate to the United States with apermanent visa. InNew York City, he taught composition atThe New School for Social Research and wrote experimental chamber and documentary music. In 1942, he moved toLos Angeles where he joined Brecht, who had arrived inCalifornia in 1941 after a long trip eastward from Denmark across the Soviet Union and the Pacific Ocean.
In the US, Eisler composed music for various documentary films and for eight Hollywood film scores, two of which –Hangmen Also Die! andNone but the Lonely Heart – were nominated forOscars in 1944 and 1945 respectively.[13][14] Also working onHangmen Also Die! was Bertolt Brecht, who wrote the story along with directorFritz Lang. From 1927 to the end of his life, Eisler wrote the music for 40 films, making film music the largest part of his compositions after vocal music for chorus and/or solo voices.
On 1 February 1940, he began work on the "Research Program on the Relation between Music and Films" funded by a grant from theRockefeller Foundation, which he got with the help of film directorJoseph Losey and The New School. This work resulted in the bookComposing for the Films which was published in 1947, withTheodor W. Adorno as co-author.
In several chamber and choral compositions of this period, Eisler returned to the twelve-tone method he had abandoned in Berlin. HisFourteen Ways of Describing the Rain, composed forArnold Schoenberg's 70th birthday celebration, is considered a masterpiece of the genre.[15]
Eisler's works of the 1930s and 1940s includedDeutsche Sinfonie, a choral symphony in 11 movements based on poems by Brecht andIgnazio Silone,[16] and a cycle of art songs published as theHollywood Songbook. With lyrics by Brecht,Eduard Mörike,Friedrich Hölderlin, andGoethe, it established Eisler's reputation as one of the 20th century's great composers of Germanlieder.
Eisler's supporters—including his friendCharlie Chaplin and the composersIgor Stravinsky,Aaron Copland[20] andLeonard Bernstein—organized benefit concerts to raise money for his defense fund, but to no avail. Eisler was deported early in 1948. His deportation disrupted a number of collaborations, such as composing a new film score for Chaplin's 1928The Circus, the lastTramp movie, which Chaplin had requested.[21] Eisler turned the score in the 1950s into concert music, which would be performed. FolksingerWoody Guthrie protested the composer's deportation in his lyrics for "Eisler on the Go"—recorded 50 years later byBilly Bragg andWilco in the 1998 albumMermaid Avenue. 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."[22]
On 26 March 1948, Eisler and his wife Lou departed fromLaGuardia Airport and flew toPrague. Before he left, he read the following 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 heartbroken over being driven out of this beautiful country in this ridiculous way.[23]
His most ambitious project of the period was the operaJohannes Faustus on theFaust theme. Thelibretto, written by Eisler himself, was published in the autumn of 1952. It portrayed Faust as an indecisive man who betrayed the cause of theworking class by not joining theGerman Peasants' War. In May 1953, Eisler's libretto was attacked by a major article inNeues Deutschland, theSED organ,[24] which 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" and of having "formalistically deformed one of the greatest works of our German poet Goethe" (Ulbricht). Eisler's opera project was discussed in three of the bi-weekly meetings "Mittwochsgesellschaft" [Wednesday club] of a circle of intellectuals under the auspices of theBerlin Academy of Arts beginning on 13 May 1953. The last of these meetings took place on Wednesday, 10 June 1953.[25]
A week later, theEast German uprising of 1953 pushed those debates from the agenda. Eisler fell into a deep depression, and consequently did not write the music for the opera. In his last work, "Ernste Gesänge" ('Serious Songs'), written between spring 1961 and August 1962, Eisler attempted to work through his depression, taking up the20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with its demise of the Stalin cult, as a sign of hope for a future enabling to "live without fear". Although he continued to work as a composer and to teach at theEast 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 musicianWolf Biermann and tried to promote him,[26] but in 1976, Biermann would be stripped of his GDR citizenship while on concert tour inWest 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.
On 6 September 1962, he died of a fatal heart attack[27] in East Berlin at the age of 64, and is buried near Brecht in theDorotheenstadt cemetery. Previously, he had been bedridden for 3 months after his first heart attack. He had been a heavy smoker since he was a child,[28] smoking up to 100 cigarettes a day on occasion. He became a heavy drinker later in life and developedalcoholism. He had slept very little and ate poorly, and as a result he also suffered fromchronic fatigue andmalnutrition.
1919:Drei Lieder (Li-Tai-Po,Klabund); "Sehr leises Gehn im lauen Wind";
1922: Allegro moderato and Waltzes; Allegretto and Andante for Piano
1923: Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 1
1923: Divertimento; Four Piano Pieces
1923: Divertimento for wind quintet, Op. 4
1924: Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 6
1925: Eight Piano Pieces
1926:Tagebuch des Hanns Eisler (Diary of Hanns Eisler);11 Zeitungsausschnitte; Ten Lieder; Three Songs for Men's Chorus (afterHeinrich Heine)
1928: "Drum sag der SPD ade"; "Lied der roten Matrosen" ("Song of the Red Sailors", withErich Weinert);Pantomime (withBéla Balázs); "Kumpellied"; "Red Sailors' Song"; "Couplet vom Zeitfreiwilligen"; "Newspaper's Son"; "Auch ein Schumacher (verschiedene Dichter)"; "Was möchst du nicht" (fromDes 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)
1931 incidental music forDie Mutter (The Mother) by Bertolt Brecht (afterMaxim Gorky), for small theatre orchestra
1931: "Lied der roten Flieger" (afterSemyon Kirsanov);Four Songs (after Frank, Weinert) from the filmNiemandsland; film music forKuhle Wampe (texts by Brecht) with the famous "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: Kleine Sinfonie, Op. 29
1932: "Ballad of the Women and the Soldiers" (with Brecht);Seven Piano Pieces;Suite No. 4, Music for the Russian filmPesn' o geroyakh (Song of Heroes) byJoris Ivens with "Song from the Urals" (afterSergei Tretyakov); reissued as instrumental piece 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 fromDie Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe; "Sklave, wer wird dich befreien" ("Slave, who will liberate you"; with Brecht); "California Ballad";Six Pieces;Prelude and Fugue onB–A–C–H (string trio);Spartakus 1919, Op. 43
1935:Die Mutter (The Mother) rewritten ascantata for chorus, solo voices and two pianos for a New York stage production
1935:Lenin Requiem for solo voices, chorus and orchestra
1948: Incidental music forJohann Nestroy's playHöllenangst
1948: "Lied über die Gerechtigkeit" ("Song of Justice", after W. Fischer)
1948: Ouvertüre zu einem Lustspiel
1949:Berliner-Suite;Rhapsody; "Lied über den Frieden" ("Song about Peace");Auferstanden aus Ruinen (National Anthem of the DDR (text byJohannes R. Becher)); "Treffass"
1956:Vier Szenen auf dem Lande (Katzgraben) ("Four Scenes from the Country", after Erwin Strittmatter); Children's Songs (after Brecht); "Fidelio" (after Beethoven)
1957:Sturm-Suite für Orchester;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", afterVladimir Mayakovsky); Three Lieder (after Mayakovsky andPeter Hacks); "Sputnik-Lied" ("Sputnik Song", text of Kuba (Kurt Barthel)); film music forLes Sorcières de Salem (The Crucible)
1935–1958:Deutsche Sinfonie (after texts of Bertolt Brecht and Ignazio Silone)
^"Communists: The Man from Moscow".Time. 17 February 1947. Archived fromthe original on 25 August 2008. Retrieved30 September 2012.Gerhart Eisler ... had just been accused of being the No. I U.S. Communist
^Arnold Pistiak (2009). "Skovbostrand 1937: Nein und Ja. Erinnerung an Hanns Eislers Kantaten auf Texte von Ignazio Silone und Bertolt Brecht" [Skovbostrand 1937: No and yes. Remeniscences to Hanns Eisler's cantatas on texts by Ignazio Silone and Bertolt Brecht]. In Frank Stern (ed.).Feuchtwanger und Exil. Glaube und Kultur 1933 – 1945. "Der Tag wird kommen" [Feuchtwanger and Exile. Belief and Culture 1933–1945. "The day will come"]. Feuchtwanger Studies, Volume 2 (in German). Bern: Peter Lang (published 2011). pp. 305–331.ISBN978-3-03-430188-6.
^Lang, Andrew (2005)."Hanns Eisler: Life: Eisler in the McCarthy Era".eislermusic.com. North American Hanns Eisler Forum. Archived fromthe original on 1 May 2015. Retrieved30 September 2012.To the rising anticommunist starRichard Nixon, then serving his first term as a U.S. Congressman, 'the case of Hanns Eisler' was 'perhaps the most important ever to have come before the committee'.
^Schebera, Jürgen[in German] (1978).Hanns Eisler im USA-Exil: zu den politischen, ästhetischen und kompositorischen Positionen des Komponisten 1938–1948 [Hanns Eisler in the US-American Exile. The positions of the composer regardting politics, estetics, and composition from 1938 to 1948] (originally written as 1976 PhD thesis) (in German). Berlin (GDR), and Meisenheim an der Glan (FRG): Akademie Verlag, and Hain.ISBN3-445-01743-3. Includes a German translation of the HUAC hearings
^Hearings regarding Hanns Eisler. Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first session, Public law 601 (section 121, subsection Q (2) ) Sept. 24, 25, and 26, 1947. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1947. p. iii.LCCN48050031.OCLC3376771.
^"McCarthy Hearings".McCarthy Hearings 1953–54 Vol. 2. U.S. Government Printing Office. Archived fromthe original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved1 June 2011.
^Guthrie, Woody (1948)."Eisler on the Go"(lyrics).woodyguthrie.org. Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. administered by Bug Music. Retrieved30 September 2012.
^Redaktionskollegium "Neues Deutschland" (14 May 1953). "Das "Faust"-Problem und die deutsche Geschichte. Bemerkungen aus Anlaß des Erscheinens des Operntextes "Johann Faustus" von Hanns Eisler" [The "Faust"-Problem and the German History. Remarks occasioned by the publication of the opera text "Johannes Faustus" by Hanns Eisler].Neues Deutschland (in German).
^Transcript of those sessions together with related documents inBunge, Hans (1991). Brecht-Zentrum Berlin (ed.).Die Debatte um Hanns Eislers "Johann Faustus": eine Dokumentation [The debate on Hanns Eisler's "Johann Faustus": a documentation] (in German). BasisDruck. pp. 45–248.ISBN978-3-86163-019-7.
^Wolf Biermann (October 1983)."Hanns Eisler: Life: Interview with Wolf Biermann (also about Gerhart Eisler)".eislermusic.com (Interview). Interviewed by James K. Miller. North American Hanns Eisler Forum. Archived fromthe original on 10 June 2007. Retrieved30 September 2012.Eisler is part of the most precious legacy which they must appropriate. And if I can contribute something to that, by telling people here (in America) about Eisler – from my very limited perspective, of course – then it's a good thing and I'm happy about it. Ja. – Originally published inCommunications, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 21–35, International Brecht Society.
Betz, Albrecht (1976).Hanns Eisler. Musik einer Zeit, die sich eben bildet [Hanns Eisler. Music of a time in formation] (in German). Munich: edition text+kritik. p. 252.ISBN3-921402-17-4.
