An Edition of Hanns Eisler's Die Reisesonate Reflects His Times
For starters, let me just say that I am not related to Hanns Eisler; my admiration for his work is purely musical. A versatile, prolific composer and master of many styles and genres, Eisler wrote 600 works for concert, theater, radio and film, including this newly published sonata for violin and piano. He achieved considerable renown and the subsequent neglect of his music was due to the political and artistic turmoil that marked his life and times.
Eisler was born in Leipzig in 1898. His father, an Austrian philosophy professor, was Jewish, although his mother was not. His family moved to Vienna in 1901 and in 1919—after serving in the Austrian army—Eisler began to study with Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg thought very highly of him, and Eisler was among the first to use the new 12-tone technique.
In 1925, he moved to Berlin, where he became involved in socialist activities along with music for theater and film. Eisler's career was aborted when the Nazis drove him into exile in 1933 for his Jewish heritage and left-wing sympathies, and he traveled around Europe until 1938, when he emigrated to America.
Eisler lectured at New York's New School for Social Research, taught at USC, wrote award-winning film-scores, and co-authored the book "Composing for the Films."
Eisler never joined the Communist Party, but still got caught up in Senator Joseph McCarthy's infamous witch-hunt for "subversives" in the movie industry. Nothing was ever proved against him, but he was deported in 1948. He settled in East Berlin, where he taught and composed until his death in 1962.
The "Journey" (or "Travel") Sonata was written in 1937 on a trip from Denmark to Prague. It is basically atonal, chromatic and dissonant, but every movement ends with an inverted tonal chord. The first movement's main theme is a twelve-tone-row featuring repeated notes that goes through many transformations; the second theme develops a "martial" dotted figure. The lyrical slow Intermezzo starts as a three-part canon, then adds a conversational counter-melody. The finale is fleet, driving and bouncy, with pungent cross-rhythms and frequent meter-changes. The texture alternates between linear and chordal.
Eisler's chromatic "spelling" is obsessively correct but hard on the players' eyes, bristling with accidentals, even double-flats and -sharps. (Should not the second E# in bar 13 in the piano part be natural? And bar 147 in the finale lacks a dot.) Dynamics range from ffff to pppp; expression marks abound, in Italian, German, and sometimes both. Eisler offers metronome markings, but no help in determining the relative note values in meter-changes, and some ritards and accelerandos go nowhere. The edition provides bar-numbers and cues, but no fingerings.
The sonata was premiered in New York in 1948 by violinist Tossy Spivakovsky and pianist Leonid Hambro. It presents considerable technical, rhythmic and stylistic challenges. The violin part, which includes several cadenzas, is extremely difficult and not very violinistic; some double stops and chords are actually unplayable. However, since it is relatively short and texturally very transparent, it might serve as an interesting introduction to the dissonant intervals and harmonies of atonality. Players familiar with the style will enjoy the sonata's conversational aspect, its witty rhythms and contrasts of character.
To rate or comment on this article, you need a site membership.
If you have a site membership already, you are seeing this message because you have not logged in.
What do you want to do?
Log in using my site membership.
Join now.
ARE FULLY MODERATED
You must be logged in to rate and comment. Log in or Join now.