BACK TO THE ROOTS Karin Wagner
Eric Zeisl’s (1905‒1959) time of exile in Los Angeles, which began in 1941, was defined, in the beginning, by the grueling task of composing for the film industry. Born in the Viennese Leopoldstadt and educated in the best of Vienna’s compositional music tradition, Zeisl found himself reduced to being a “technician” in Hollywood; someone whose artistic aspirations could not be achieved due to the huge quantity of film sequences that had to be continuously churned out. Several composers worked on the same film; thus the illustrative musical passages had to be easily swappable and impersonal. Although Zeisl had been able to compose and freely arrange his own compositions in New York in 1940, he subsequently experienced a severe crisis in creativity in 1941. Besides the incidental music to Emil Ludwig’s The Return of Ulysses (1943) Zeisl did not compose a single work other than the film music. Only the year 1944 brought a change by way of his instrumental compositions for piano and organ, and with his Requiem Ebraico, (1944‒45) Zeisl was able to end this compositional stalemate. The Requiem is not a liturgical Catholic Latin Mass for the Dead, and the 92nd Psalm, from which it draws inspiration, is also not a dirge per se. Upon Zeisl receiving the news of the death of his father and stepmother, who in 1942 had both been first deported to Teresienstadt and subsequently murdered in Treblinka, Zeisl received a commission to write music for the synagogue service, which took on an entirely new meaning for him: the psalm was composed as a ‘Requiem’, dedicated to the memory of his father
and the innumerable victims of the Holocaust. In this composition, Zeisl developed his Hebraic or synagogue style so typical for his years of exile, which had begun in Paris with his incidental music to a staged version of Hiob by Joseph Roth. Eric Zeisl’s adaptation to music of Jewish rhythm and intonation in absolute or serious music, without specific reference to Jewish subject matter, is distinctive for a cycle of chamber music compositions that begins with the Sonata Barocca for piano (1948‒49) and ends with the Second String Quartet of 1953. These works include vital dance elements from the “spirit of Jewish folklore”, as well as the soul of Jewish prayer internalised in the andante movements. Composed in a Classical sonata form, enhanced by rondo and fugal forms, there ensues an enticing mixture of traditional European compositional techniques with new modalities and characteristic intervals in quasiJewish inflection, as well as ostinato technique and recitative-based material. With this fusion of styles, Zeisl established his own personal voice for his compositional style of the 1950s. Among the instrumental works of this period are the Brandeis Sonata (1949‒50) for violin and piano, the Sonata for Viola and Piano (1950) and the Sonata for Cello and Piano (1951). “[…] your wonderful Sonata with the dedication which moved me most deeply. I don’t know how to express to you my thanks and feelings. I read it at the piano and found it most beautiful.”1 Thus wrote Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986), Zeisl’s friend in Los Angeles and
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