G. Schirmer, Inc. and Exilarte sign historic agreement to restore, preserve and publish hundreds of musical works lost in the Holocaust

27 October 2022 - Press release

 

The American classical music publishing house, G. Schirmer, Inc. (part of Wise Music Group) has signed an historic agreement with the Exilarte Center for Banned Music in Vienna, Austria, the world’s leading center for the restoration, preservation and publication of composers banned by the Nazis during World War II. 

G. Schirmer and Exilarte will make available more than 400 musical works — over 300 songs, 100 chamber music works, 50 orchestral works, several vocal and stage works, and numerous film scores, all of which have yet to be published. G. Schirmer will act as the publisher for all works restored by Exilarte and, via Wise Music Group’s foundation, will provide continued financial support to Exilarte to guarantee the continued restoration, preservation, and publication of composers’ works banned during the 1930s and 1940s. 

Robert Thompson, president of G. Schirmer/Wise Music, says, “We at Schirmer and Wise Music Group are especially honored today. Exilarte has been a beacon of light since 2006 as the leading institution in locating, restoring, and making available musical works by composers lost during the Holocaust. Their work is vital, precious, and honorable, ensuring that these composers who were silenced during World War II are not forgotten, their legacies restored, and their musical works brought to the public for the first time in performances and recordings. Through our partnership with Exilarte, our goal is to continue and expand upon their mission of restoring, preserving, and disseminating the work of composers whose lives, work and artistry were tragically cut short.”

Dr. Gerold Gruber, Exilarte founder and chairman of the Exilarte Center, says, “The Nazis wanted a world in which the music of Jewish composers would have been banned and forgotten. It is therefore our obligation to counteract these policies by rescuing the music of exiled composers from oblivion. The cooperation between Exilarte and Schirmer/Wise is of incredible value for future generations.”

Dr. Ulrike Anton, vice-chair of the Exilarte Center, adds, “As a performing musician and musicologist, I am thrilled that scores from our archive will be published by G. Schirmer, Inc./ Wise Music Group. For the first time this will enable worldwide distribution of extremely valuable works by composers who were forced into exile by the Nazis.”

Founded in 2006 as an association to address the preservation of music that had been suppressed by the Nazi regime — largely written by Jewish composers who were targeted by the Third Reich’s genocidal anti-Semitic policies — Exilarte in 2016 became a fully accredited research center and archive based on the historic campus of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. 

Exilarte’s senior researcher Dr. Michael Haas — the Grammy Award-winning classical music producer and author of Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis (Yale University Press) — says, “When Exilarte was a society, we had no archive facilities.” With the inauguration of its association with the University of Music and Performing Arts, Exilarte became more deeply involved in acquiring, archiving, and preserving the estates of banned composers.

“We decided not to limit ourselves to Austrians,” Haas says. “We would take any composer and musician from anywhere in Europe who had been a victim of the Third Reich. We now have the musical estates of people from France, from Hungary, from Poland, from Serbia, from Czechoslovakia, and we have lots of estates coming from Germany. We also decided that we would take any genre, so we would take classical music, we would take popular music, we would take film music, we would take cabaret…”

One exile who survived and flourished in America was composer Walter Arlen. He settled in Los Angeles, where he founded Loyola Marymount University’s music program and served as a critic at the Los Angeles Times for 30 years. In 2008, the very first recordings devoted to Arlen’s songs and piano works, produced by Haas under Exilarte’s auspices, was released by Gramola Records. A new recording of his orchestral/choral work Song of Songs will be released in 2023.

Now 102 years old and residing in Santa Monica, CA, Arlen says he anticipates that the new association between Exilarte and G. Schirmer will increase exposure for his work: “…I feel honored that they have come to me and want to do something with my music.”

Haas also anticipates that the association with G. Schirmer will encourage the families of other exiled composers to bring the music they control to Exilarte, which in turn will bring the music — some of which may never have been recorded or performed — to the public.

“We can make sure that it is disseminated. It’s not just a matter of handing us your dad’s or your granddad’s or your great-uncle’s musical manuscripts, and it’s going to go to a nice library. We’re actually going to do something with it.”

Currently, Exilarte’s holdings represent the estates of 30 composers and musicians; it is in negotiations to acquire five more estates. The catalogues include the works of such diverse musicians as legendary Hollywood composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the prolific Viennese star Walter Bricht, composer turned popular songwriter Wilhellm Grosz, and German art song writer Gustav Lewj. Like another Hollywood luminary, Franz Waxman — whose extensive catalogue of film scores and classical works was acquired earlier this year by G. Schirmer — they and many others fled their homelands for exile in the United Kingdom and the U.S. Others perished in the Holocaust.

G. Schirmer, Inc. is the oldest continuously active North American music publisher, founded in 1861. In addition to publishing an active catalog of celebrated 20th Century composers, including Samuel Barber, Henry Cowell, Julius Eastman, Duke Ellington, Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, Andre Previn, Florence Price, Sergei Prokofiev, Bright Sheng, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Franz Waxman, the company also represents works by a wide range of living composers, including John Adams, John Corigliano, Donnacha Dennehy, Du Yun, Gabriela Lena Frank, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Terry Riley, Kaija Saariaho, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Tan Dun, Joby Talbot, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Joan Tower. 

 

MUSICAL ESTATES WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY HELD BY EXILARTE

Ferdinand Adler

Walter Arlen

Anita Bild

Walter Bricht

Theo Buchwald

Julius Bürger

Marta Eggerth

Robert Freistadtl (Frey)

Richard Fuch

Hans Gál

Robert Fürstensaal

Wilhellm Grosz

David Grünschlag

Richard Hoffmann

Hugo Kauder

Jan Kiepura

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Gustav Lewis

Egon Lustgarten

Maria Piscator

Erwin Piscator

Eric Sander

André Singer

Walter Susskind

Richard Tauber/Mary Losseff

Georg Tintner

Jan Urban

Eduard Van Clef

Hans Winterberg

Walter Wurzburger