Hanns Eisler - 'tis the gift to be free

Composer Hanns Eisler (above) was born on 6 July, 1898. It was Aaron Copland's sponsorship of a benefit concert for Eisler, who was forced to leave the U.S. in 1948 as an 'undesirable alien', that brought Copland in front of the notorious Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Read the story and hearing transcript here.

Image credit filmreference.com. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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Kyle L said…
Thanks for mentioning Hanns Eisler's birthday. I honored Eisler today by listening to a recording of his Deutsche Sinfonie, which I almost forgot I had. I'm glad I did, because it is a powerful work!
4:35 am
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