Eisler and Orff, half III, 2023

This Week in Classical Music: July 24, 2023.  Hanns Eisler and Carl Orff, Half III.  Within the earlier two posts, we informed the story of two German composers whose lives have been upended by the Nazi regime.  So what are the legacies of Carl Orff and Hans Eisler?  Eisler, as you might recall, spent his final years in East Germany, the Communist nation subjugated by the Soviet Union, with an indoctrinated and managed cultural life.  Despite the fact that he was GDR’s most well-known composer, who wrote the music to the nationwide anthem, Eisler needed to stay and create in keeping with the Get together guidelines.  His extra “formalist” music was criticized and far of his output within the final years was populist by design: music for movies and choruses and naturally for the performs of his pricey pal Brecht who was additionally residing in East Germany.  However we should always do not forget that Eisler was a dedicated Marxist who had written propagandist music for years, so the environment of the GDR fitted him higher than it in all probability would some other artistic artist.  Eisler died in 1968, just about forgotten by the West.  Then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, the nation reunited underneath the management of the Western, democratic half, and Eisler was “rediscovered,” if not with nice enthusiasm.  Eisler’s music isn’t carried out usually, though a few of his output is clearly of very top quality.  Hear, for instance, to his late assortment of eight “Severe songs (Ernste Gesänge): it’s completely fantastic.  (The baritone Günther Leib is accompanied by the Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin underneath the route of Günther Herbig).

Carl Orff, who survived, and fairly comfortably, the Nazi regime whereas not leaving Germany for a day, was investigated by the Individuals in 1946 and underwent the denazification course of.  In accordance with the musicologist Michael Kater, in the course of the course of Orff made up some details, presenting himself in opposition to the Nazi regime.  That helped him to obtain the classification permitting a return to public life.  In Orff’s protection, he by no means joined the Nazi Get together and by no means held any management positions.  He was in lots of respects a compromised determine (he fulfilled Nazi’s commissions by writing the music for the 1936 Olympic video games and alternative music for the Midsummer Night time’s Dream), however we can’t say that his music in itself was “fascist.”  After the struggle, Orff taught on the Hochschule für Musik in Munich and obtained many awards.  In 1951 he accomplished the cantata Trionfo di Afrodite, which, with Carmina Burana and Catulli Carmina shaped a triptych known as Trionfi.   The primary a part of the triptych, Carmina Burana, stays not simply Orff’s hottest composition, however one of the fashionable music composed within the 20^th century.  It has been utilized in dozens of flicks and ads.  Orff can be remembered for his work in music schooling.  His Schulwerk (“College Work”) is a number of the greatest music composed for youngsters.

 Right here’s Catulli Carmina, composed by Orff in 1941-43.  The Münchner Rundfunkorchester orchestra and the Mozart-Chor, Linz are performed by Franz Welser-Möst.