Eisler before the House

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1947, the German composer Hans Eisler, who had been living in the United States since 1938, was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

This was some years before Joseph McCarthy headed such investigations, but one member of the committee was a first-term Californian congressman by the name of Richard M. Nixon. Nixon and other committee members were eager to expose Communist agents, who they believed were undermining American values by infiltrating and influencing the film industry.

Hans Eisler, who had been working in Hollywood since 1942, was a prime suspect. After all, his brother Gerhard was an ardent Communist, and Hanns himself a close artistic collaborator of the Marxist poet, Bertolt Brecht. As one newspaper reported, Hans Eisler was “the commissar of the West Coast Party activities on the movie front.”

While Hans Eilser did have leftist sympathies, there was absolutely no evidence of his being a Soviet agent, and as a film music composer, Eisler had no ideological influence on the scripts or even the topics of the films on which he worked. Celebrities like Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland all rallied to his defense, but to no avail. The mood of the country in the early days of the Red Scare was such that Eisler was banned from working his Hollywood, and eventually forced out of the country.

Like his old friend Bertold Brecht, Eisler eventually settled in Communist East Germany, where he died in 1962.

Music Played in Today's Program

Hanns Eisler (1898 – 1962) Deutsche Sinfonie, Op. 50 Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Lothar Zagrosek, cond. London 448 389

On This Day

Births

• 1914 - Polish composer and conductor Andrzej Panufnik, in Warsaw;

• 1919 - Czech-born American composer Vaclav Nelhybel, in Polanska;

• 1945 - English composer and conductor John Rutter, in London;

Deaths

• 1813 - Belgian-born French composer André Grétry, age 72, in Montmorency;

• 1892 - Irish-born American bandmaster and composer Patrick Gilmore, age 62, in St. Louis;

Premieres

• 1909 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera "The Golden Cockerel," posthumously, in Moscow (Gregorian date: Oct. 7);

• 1962 - Barber: Piano Concerto, with soloist John Browning and the Boston Symphony conducted by Erich Leinsdorf; This performance was the second concert scheduled at the newly-opened "Philharmonic Hall" (now Avery Fisher Hall) at Lincoln Center in New York City;

• 1965 - George Rochberg: "Black Sounds" for winds and percussion, on a "Lincoln Center" television broadcast (as a ballet by Anna Sokolov under the title "The Act");

• 1992 - Tobias Picker: "Bang!" by the New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur onducting (A New York Philharmonic 150th Anniversary commission);

• 1994 - Zwilich: "American" Concerto for trumpet and orchestra, at the inaugural concert of the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, by the San Diego Symphony, JoAnn Faletta conducting, with soloist Doc Severinson;

Others

• 1947 - German-born composer Hans Eisler is questioned about his former membership in the Communist Party by the House Committee on Un-American activities; Eisler had been a member of the Party in the 1920s, left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933, and had been working in Hollywood on film scores and as the musical assistant to Charlie Chaplin; He left the U.S. in 1948 and settled in East Germany - where he composed that country's national anthem.