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Walter Arlen

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Walter Arlen
old man aged 100, smiling broadly
Arlen in 2020, aged 100
Born
Walter Aptowitzer

(1920-07-31)July 31, 1920
Vienna, Austria
DiedSeptember 2, 2023(2023-09-02) (aged 103)
Santa Monica, California, US
Citizenship
  • Austria
  • United States
Occupations
  • Composer
  • music critic
  • academic teacher
Organizations
Spouse
Howard Myers
​
(m. 2013)​
AwardsDecoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria

Walter Arlen (né Aptowitzer; July 31, 1920 – September 2, 2023) was an Austrian-born American composer, focused on songs for voice and piano. Just after completing school, he fled the Nazi regime in Vienna for the United States, where he worked as a music critic for the Los Angeles Times, and a professor of music at the Loyola Marymount University. He was recognised as a composer late in life.

Life and career

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Walter Aptowitzer was born in Vienna on July 31, 1920,[1][2] to a middle-class Jewish family.[3][4][5] His parents ran Warenhaus Dichter, a department store founded by his grandfather in 1890.[6][7][8] At age five, his grandfather took him to musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch, who discovered that he had perfect pitch, and recommended that he take piano lessons.[6] He had a piano in his room,[6] and felt an urge to compose at age ten.[9]

His parents' department store was expropriated by the Nazis after the Night of Broken Glass in 1938.[1] His father was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp[1][5] and his mother suffered a nervous breakdown.[1]

He left Austria right after completing school, in 1939,[9] and immigrated to the United States, changing his name to Arlen.[7] He first settled in Chicago, while other family members escaped to London, a fact he did not know. He made money by working as a salesman. Suffering from depression, he saw a therapist who recommended to pick up composing as a means of therapy.[2] He trained at the Chicago Conservatory, with Leo Sowerby and Roy Harris,[2][6] whose assistant he became. He won a composition prize of the Conservatory. He studied composition further at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and the University of California in Los Angeles, where he graduated with a master's degree in 1955.[10]

Arlen worked as a journalist and music critic for the Los Angeles Times, first as an assistant to Albert Goldberg who was music critic from 1952 to 1980. It gave him first-hand experience of the musical life of the city. He founded the music department at Loyola University Chicago in 1969, and was emerited in 1990.[10][3] Arlen established friendships with numerous other German and Austrian émigrées, including Stravinsky, Milhaud, Villa-Lobos, and Carlos Chávez.[1][2][7] He was instrumental in tracking down other artists from the Nazi era whose works were lost or forgotten due to the systematic destruction of art that was deemed degenerate by the regime.[9] Arlen returned to composition only after retiring from the journalist post in the 1980s.[2]

On July 2, 2013, he married his partner Howard Myers in West Hollywood, California.[5] In 2020 he received honorary citizenship from the town of Bad Sauerbrunn on his 100th birthday.[11]

Arlen was interviewed at length for the 2023 Netflix documentary Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate; he talked about his first love as a teenager, Fülöp "Lumpi" Loránt, a Hungarian Jew and family friend, who was murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.[4][5]

Arlen lived in Santa Monica, California, and died at a hospital in the city on September 2, 2023, at age 103.[12][13][14][15]

Works

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Arlen composed 65 works, mostly for voice and piano. In the 1980s, he set poetry by Saint John of the Cross which his partner Howard Myers had given to him.[2] He stopped composing in 2000, when he became blind due to macular degeneration.[13] His works were published by Doblinger.[10]

His works for voice and piano include:[16]

  • Excerpt from The Song of Songs, setting excerpts from Song of Songs
  • Four Robert Frost Songs, setting poetry by Robert Frost
  • Five Songs of Love and Yearning, setting texts by John of the Cross
  • Sonnets to Orpheus, setting Rilke's poetry
  • "Es geht wohl anders", setting a poem by Eichendorff
  • Sonnets of Shakespeare, setting some sonnets by Shakespeare
  • "Le Tombeau de Gabriel Fauré", setting a poem by Rilke
  • The poet in Exile, setting poems by Czesław Miłosz
  • Endymion, setting poems by Constantine P. Cavafy
  • "Wiegenlied", setting a poem by Paul Heyse

Recordings

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Arlen's works were recorded by Gramola, after they were discovered late in his life by Michael Haas who led the degenerate music program at Decca Records. The first CD of Arlen's music was released when he was 92 years old.[9] The pianist was often Daniel Vnukowski who focused on music by composers in exile due to the Nazis. He edited Arlen's piano works for the publisher Doblinger. His recordings of Arlen's piano music were used as a soundtrack in a documentary about the composer's life, entitled Walter Arlen's First Century (Das erste Jahrhundert des Walter Arlen), premiered at the Vienna International Film Festival on October 30, 2018.[17] Vnukowski also produced a video on the occasion of Arlen's centenary.[18]

  • 2012: Es geht wohl anders (Things turn out differently), Rebecca Nelsen (soprano), Christian Immler (baritone), Danny Driver (piano), 2 CDs, Gramola[2][9][19][20]
  • 2014: Die letzte Blaue, Rebecca Nelsen, Christian Immler, Daniel Vnukowski, Daniel Hope, 2 CDs, Gramola[2][19]
  • 2015: "Wien, du allein": Memories of an Exiled Wandering Viennese Jew Rebecca Nelsen, Daniel Vnukowski, 2 CDs, Gramola[2]

Awards

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Horak, Jan-Christopher (August 16, 2019). "Happy Birthday, Walter Arlen!". UCLA Film and Television Archive. Retrieved October 18, 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i McKee, Abaigh. "Walter Arlen (b. 1920)". Music and the Holocaust. World ORT.
  3. ^ a b "Walter Arlen — CFA Faculty". Loyola Marymount University. Retrieved July 15, 2023.
  4. ^ a b Kramer, Gary M. (June 23, 2023). "Eldorado documentary explores LGBTQ+ Weimar Germany". Philadelphia Gay News. Retrieved August 26, 2023.
  5. ^ a b c d Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate. Netflix. June 28, 2023. Retrieved August 26, 2023.
  6. ^ a b c d Haas, Michael (October 19, 2015). "Walter Arlen: Exiled Composer's Personal Works Are Rediscovered". kcet.org. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  7. ^ a b c Haas, Michael (July 17, 2020). "On July 31. 2020, The Composer Walter Arlen Turns 100". forbiddenmusic.org. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  8. ^ Greiving, Tim (January 27, 2023). "Forensic musicologists race to rescue works lost after the Holocaust". NPR. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  9. ^ a b c d e Cullingford, Martin (April 5, 2012). "Walter Arlen: a life set to song". Gramophone.
  10. ^ a b c d e "Walter Arlen, geb. Aptowitzer". orpheusnews.at (in German). January 12, 2014. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  11. ^ a b "Bad Sauerbrunn: Ehrenbürgerschaft für 100-Jährigen". meinbezirk.at (in German). August 5, 2020. Retrieved August 5, 2020.
  12. ^ Trenkler, Thomas [de]: Der Holocaust-Überlebende Walter Arlen starb mit 103 Jahren (in German) Kurier, September 4, 2023
  13. ^ a b "In memoriam Walter Arlen". gramola.at (in German). September 8, 2023. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  14. ^ "Austrian-American Composer Walter Arlen has Died, Aged 103". The Violin Channel. September 5, 2023. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  15. ^ McFadden, Robert D. (August 5, 2024). "Walter Arlen, Holocaust Refugee and Belated Composer, Is Dead at 103". The New York Times. Retrieved August 5, 2024.
  16. ^ "Es geht wohl anders" (PDF). exilarte.org (in German). 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  17. ^ Domanig, Stephanus (2018). "Das erste Jahrhundert des Walter Arlen". Viennale (in German). Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  18. ^ "100. Geburtstag von Walter Arlen – das exil.arte Zentrum gratuliert!". exilarte.org (in German). 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  19. ^ a b "CD Aufnahmen". exilarte.org (in German). 2023. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  20. ^ Stearns, David Patrick (September 2012). "ARLEN Lieder". Gramophone. Retrieved September 9, 2023.
  21. ^ Komponist und Musikkritiker Walter Arlen im Parlament ausgezeichnet Arlen: Die Kunst hat mich mit Österreich versöhnt. (press release, in German) In: APA-OTS [de]-Aussendung der Parlamentskorrespondenz, October 13, 2008, retrieved July 28, 2020.
  22. ^ November 4, 2011: Gedenkmatinee zur Erinnerung an das Novemberpogrom 1938 im Volkstheater mit Walter Arlen November 6, 2011.
  23. ^ Walter Arlen übergibt Vorlass an Stadt Wien. Mailath ehrt den Komponisten mit Goldenem Verdienstzeichen. (in German) In: Rathauskorrespondenz [de] archive, November 6, 2011, retrieved July 28, 2020.
  24. ^ Goldenen Rathausmann für Walter Arlen beim Ottakringer „Vernetzungscocktail“. (in German) In: APA-OTS-Aussendung des SPÖ Wien Rathausklubs, May 8, 2015, retrieved July 28, 2020.

Further reading

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