Erich Zeisl

Eric Zeisl

Erich Zeisl (May 18, 1905 – February 18, 1959) was an Austrian-born Jewish American composer.

Life and music

Born to a middle class Jewish family in Vienna, Zeisl was the son of Kamilla (Feitler) and Siegmund Zeisl. His musical precocity enabled him to gain a place at the Vienna State Academy (against the wishes of his family) when he was 14, at which age his first song was published. While there, he studied with Richard Stöhr, Joseph Marx and Hugo Kauder. He won a state prize for a setting of the Requiem mass in 1934, but his Jewish background made it difficult to obtain work and publication. After the Anschluss in 1938 he fled, first to Paris, where he began work on an opera based on Joseph Roth's Job, and then to New York.

Eventually he went to Hollywood where he worked on film music but increasingly felt isolated and ill at ease with the production-line demands of his employers. Among the films for which he wrote music were The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951).

Zeisl's style was essentially tonal, and conservative compared to contemporaries such as Arnold Schoenberg, and thus not totally unsuited to film music composition. But his heart lay elsewhere. At one stage he was employed to arrange the music for a highly inaccurate stage show about the life of Tchaikovsky, Song without Words. His anguish about his reduction to such work (together with the straits to which other émigré composers in America were reduced at the time) is evident in a letter written to a friend in 1945:

'Even Milhaud, Stravinsky, Tansman are struggling. Béla Bartók died in New York of hunger! [...] Last year I orchestrated a Tchaikowsky operetta which provided [a] living for 8 months, but why does Tchaikowsky have to be put into an operetta? [...] No composer is important here'.

Nonetheless Zeisl was able eventually to find academic appointments and time to compose in his own style. These works included a variety of chamber music, a piano concerto, a concerto for cello (written for Gregor Piatigorsky), and a setting for choir, soloists, and orchestra of Psalm 92 in Hebrew, which he entitled Requiem Ebraico ("Hebrew Requiem"), written in 1944-5 in memory of his father. A work of variations for orchestra based on "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear". His opera "Hiob" (Job) was never completed.

Zeisl was married to Gertrud Susanne (Jellinek). His daughter Barbara Zeisl Schoenberg married Ronald Schoenberg, the son of the composer Arnold Schoenberg. His grandson is lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg. Zeisl died of a heart attack while teaching in Los Angeles.

Zeisl's status as a proscribed musician under the Nazi regime has been one element in a revival of interest in his music, some of which is now available on CD. Premiere performances of the Requiem Ebraico were held in Israel (under the baton of Zubin Mehta) and in London in 2006.

Selected works

Ballets

• Pierrot in der Flasche
• Uranium 235
• Naboth's Vinyard
• Jacob und Rachel

Choral

• Afrika singt
• Requiem Concertante
• Requiem Ebraico

Operas

• Leonce und Lena
• Hiob (unfinished)

Chamber

• Sonata for cello and piano (1950)

Songs

• "Liebeslied"
• "Mondbilder" (Text by Christian Morgenstern)
• "Harlemer Nachtlied" for Soprano, Tenor and Choir

Orchestral

• Scherzo und Fuge für Streichorchester
• Passacaglia-Fantasie für Orchester
• Kleine Symphonie
• Piano Concerto (1951/1952)
• Variations Based on "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" for Orchestra

Sources

• Malcolm S. Cole and Barbara Barclay, Armseelchen - the Life and Music of Eric Zeisl, 1984 ISBN 0-313-23800-6

External links

• Eric Zeisl web site contains articles, photographs and MP3s of some of his music.
• Website of Zeisl's daughter Dr. Barbara Zeisl Schoenberg with additional photographs of, and information about, Zeisl.
• The OREL Foundation- Eric Zeisl's biography and links to bibliography, discography and media.
• Interview of Gertrude S. Zeisl, including many details about Erich Zeisl's life and work, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
• Essay on Erich Zeisl on his 50th Death Anniversary on the website of WETA 90.9 FM.
• Zeisl in Los Angeles Times