be an act of treachery. To the offspring of musical refugees, themselves now completely assimilated within the societies that had provided safe havens to their parents, former homelands had no right to any claim of cultural ownership. The bitterness and resentment ran understandably deep. Yet it was only with the passage of time that our historic sightlines would become more focused. This meant that London/Decca's recording series ‘Entartete Musik’ would resonate in the early 1990s in a way that would have been unthinkable before. The angry protagonists on both sides had largely died out and the rest of us were left with a bewildered and bewildering legacy.
Did one value Ernst Toch as a central musical figure during the years of the Weimar Republic or ‘Ernest’ Toch, the Hollywood composer of comedy horror-films starring Bob Hope? His estate landed in UCLA on the basis that the latter was more relevant than the former. In very few instances could the post-exile contributions of anyone old enough to have already made a name in Germany and Austria amount to the same degree of importance duringtheir pre-exile years. The exceptions are rare yet often mentioned: Kurt Weill on Broadway and Erich Korngold in Hollywood. Yet for every Weill and Korngold there are dozens of Ernst Tochs. As music curator at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, I found unsettling the oft-made confession by even the most helpful archives in distant lands that they had no German speakers and therefore remained unable to identify pre-emigration documentation; especially as the documentation in question was often falling apart and just as frequently, incorrectly catalogued. Yet those children and grandchildren who have taken the leap of faith and offered to return musical estates to the cultural homelands of their parents and grandparents are confronted with the equally baffling situation of insufficient funding and personnel being available to provide what justice demands. As a result, many important musical estates remain stored in private lofts, under beds, in garden sheds or basements. Only within the last years have refugee-composers started to return to the historic consciousness of a younger, more inquisitive generation of Austrian and German musicians and scholars. It is these same young German and Austrian musicians who discover that scores and orchestral parts, even of those works rescued by publishers, are often in a state of editorial disarray, making contemporary performances reliant on guess work.
In our global society, culture is no longer the sole property of a single nation. It is the property of all with the interest and ambition to ask awkward questions and make new discoveries about themselves and the musical environment they inhabit. In a digital world, the need for digital preservation of musical émigré estates is self-evident. Just as important is the editorial input that addresses the issues that make contemporary performances challenging. If the purpose of this book was to demonstrate that the Jewish contribution to German music was not delusional, this epilogue attests to the urgency needed to preserve the widely strewn documentation, and restore the music itself, on which much of this book was based.
Bibliography
Adler, Tom, and Anika Scott: Lost to the World (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2002)
Adorno, Theodor W.: Gesammelte Schriften , ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schlutz (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1986)
Aigner, Thomas, Sylvia Mattl-Wurm, et al., ed.: Hugo Wolf Biographisches, Netzwerk, Rezeption (Vienna: Metroverlag, 2020)
Allende-Blin, Juan, ed.: Musiktradition im Exil (Cologne: Bundverlag, 1993)
Altenberg, Peter: Mein Lebensabend Erinnerungen (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1919)
Aly, Götz: Warum die Deutschen? Warum die Juden? (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2011)
Antheil, George: Bad Boy of Music (London: National Book Association, 1949)
Appignanesi, Lisa: The Cabaret (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
Did one value Ernst Toch as a central musical figure during the years of the Weimar Republic or ‘Ernest’ Toch, the Hollywood composer of comedy horror-films starring Bob Hope? His estate landed in UCLA on the basis that the latter was more relevant than the former. In very few instances could the post-exile contributions of anyone old enough to have already made a name in Germany and Austria amount to the same degree of importance duringtheir pre-exile years. The exceptions are rare yet often mentioned: Kurt Weill on Broadway and Erich Korngold in Hollywood. Yet for every Weill and Korngold there are dozens of Ernst Tochs. As music curator at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, I found unsettling the oft-made confession by even the most helpful archives in distant lands that they had no German speakers and therefore remained unable to identify pre-emigration documentation; especially as the documentation in question was often falling apart and just as frequently, incorrectly catalogued. Yet those children and grandchildren who have taken the leap of faith and offered to return musical estates to the cultural homelands of their parents and grandparents are confronted with the equally baffling situation of insufficient funding and personnel being available to provide what justice demands. As a result, many important musical estates remain stored in private lofts, under beds, in garden sheds or basements. Only within the last years have refugee-composers started to return to the historic consciousness of a younger, more inquisitive generation of Austrian and German musicians and scholars. It is these same young German and Austrian musicians who discover that scores and orchestral parts, even of those works rescued by publishers, are often in a state of editorial disarray, making contemporary performances reliant on guess work.
In our global society, culture is no longer the sole property of a single nation. It is the property of all with the interest and ambition to ask awkward questions and make new discoveries about themselves and the musical environment they inhabit. In a digital world, the need for digital preservation of musical émigré estates is self-evident. Just as important is the editorial input that addresses the issues that make contemporary performances challenging. If the purpose of this book was to demonstrate that the Jewish contribution to German music was not delusional, this epilogue attests to the urgency needed to preserve the widely strewn documentation, and restore the music itself, on which much of this book was based.
Bibliography
Adler, Tom, and Anika Scott: Lost to the World (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2002)
Adorno, Theodor W.: Gesammelte Schriften , ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schlutz (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1986)
Aigner, Thomas, Sylvia Mattl-Wurm, et al., ed.: Hugo Wolf Biographisches, Netzwerk, Rezeption (Vienna: Metroverlag, 2020)
Allende-Blin, Juan, ed.: Musiktradition im Exil (Cologne: Bundverlag, 1993)
Altenberg, Peter: Mein Lebensabend Erinnerungen (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1919)
Aly, Götz: Warum die Deutschen? Warum die Juden? (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2011)
Antheil, George: Bad Boy of Music (London: National Book Association, 1949)
Appignanesi, Lisa: The Cabaret (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
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