Walter Arlen

Walter Arlen (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
Walter Aptowitzer was born in Vienna on July 31, 1920, to a middle-class Jewish family. His parents ran Warenhaus Dichter, a department store founded by his grandfather in 1890. 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. He had a piano in his room, and felt an urge to compose at age ten.
His parents' department store was expropriated by the Nazis after the Night of Broken Glass in 1938. His father was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp and his mother suffered a nervous breakdown.
He left Austria right after completing school, in 1939, and immigrated to the United States, changing his name to Arlen. 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. He trained at the Chicago Conservatory, with Leo Sowerby and Roy Harris, 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.
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. Arlen established friendships with numerous other German and Austrian emigrées, including Stravinsky, Milhaud, Villa-Lobos, and Carlos Chávez. 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. Arlen returned to composition only after retiring from the journalist post in the 1980s.
On July 2, 2013, he married his partner Howard Myers in West Hollywood. In 2020 he received honorary citizenship from the town of Bad Sauerbrunn on his 100th birthday.
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.
Arlen died in Los Angeles on September 2, 2023, at age 103.
Works
Arlen composed 65 works, mostly for voice and piano. In the 1980s, he set poetry by Saint John of the Cross which his friend Howard Myers had given to him. He stopped composing in 2000, when he became blind due to macular degeneration. His works were published by Doblinger.
His works for voice and piano include:
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
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. 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. Vnukowski also produced a video on the occasion of Arlen's centenary.
2012: (Things turn out differently), Rebecca Nelsen (soprano), Christian Immler (baritone), Danny Driver (piano), 2 CDs, Gramola
2014: , Rebecca Nelsen, Christian Immler, Daniel Vnukowski, Daniel Hope, 2 CDs, Gramola
2015: "Wien, du allein": Memories of an Exiled Wandering Viennese Jew Rebecca Nelsen, Daniel Vnukowski, 2 CDs, Gramola
Awards
2008: Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
2011:
2015: of the city of Vienna
2020: Honorary citizen of Bad Sauerbrunn
References
Further reading
Irrgeher, Christoph: Emotional nicht entronnen. Walter Arlen: Vom Nazi-Regime vertrieben, nun als Komponist in Wien gefeiert (in German) in: Wiener Zeitung. August 17, 2010, Austria-Forum
: "Das Blut auf dem weißen Schnee werd' ich nie vergessen". Der 97-jährige Komponist und Musikkritiker Walter Arlen über seine glückliche Kindheit im Wiener Warenhaus Dichter, den Anschluss, die Reichspogromnacht am 9. November 1938 – und seine Flucht im März 1939 nach Chicago (interview, in German) Kurier. November 9, 2017.
The Cenntenial of Walter Arlen | Zum 100. Geburtstag von Walter Arlen (Villa Aurora)
External links
Walter Arler (in German) Wien Geschichte Wiki, September 2023
1920 births
2023 deaths
20th-century American composers
20th-century American Jews
20th-century Austrian composers
20th-century American LGBT people
20th-century Austrian LGBT people
21st-century American composers
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American LGBT people
21st-century Austrian LGBT people
American centenarians
American classical composers
American LGBT composers
American male classical composers
American music critics
American music educators
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Austrian centenarians
Austrian classical composers
Austrian emigrants to the United States
Austrian LGBT composers
Austrian male classical composers
Austrian music critics
Austrian music educators
Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
Jewish American classical composers
LGBT classical composers
Men centenarians
Musicians from Vienna
Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany