Although written in the mid-Eighties this is still an exhaustive,detailed account of a Twentieth Century master,the first in English. Eisler was a Marxist and wrote music as well, two ultimately unique facets of a creator today. No one forsaw the emergence of culture as a last bastion of internal resistence to the state of the world. This is why Betz's book here is so important, for it gives both the analytic and the historical. Betz traces Eisler's entire career. Beginning with the early days as a Schoenberg student. Eisler to my mind anyway had more of a realist vision of the state of Germany,than his counterparts Weill,Berg or Webern in the Twenties,which is why he adopted his political convictions. His early music adopts a Schoenbergian free atonality but he finds his own voice there. Compelling, neurotic and momentum bound are the main features of this early music,He wrote a powerful "First Piano Sonata" from this period and began dabbling in music as social discourse He utilized newspaper clippings, or "Zeitungsausschnitte" the title of the work for piano and voice. Betz extends his analysis to Eisler's meeting in Berlin with Brecht, one of the most prolific and profound collaboration of this century. Betz develops a concept of Eisler's modernity and the unique creative challenges he faced in uniting text with music. Eisler, who wrote over 500 songs during his life was like the Schubert of our age,almost no text was beyond a run through with piano accompaniment. The thrust of this modernity was Eisler's penchant for a striking image, a compact,terse lyrical musical means. Often his songs are quite short which points to this modernity in fast development and quick,concentrated musical motives, where single exposed tones can trigger an image of violence or terror. There is also here an elaborate discussion of Eisler's last major work the opera "Johann Faustus". When Eisler was thrown out of the United States he returned to the DDR, East Germany, and was wholly ignored by the apparatcik authorities,despite the fact that he wrote their National Anthem. This opera was reason enough for this institutional neglect, with veiled barbs on the seductive sides of tyranny. He used the "Peasant Wars" in Germany in the early 1500's as a remote yet very immediate reality for this opera. Betz also includes a comprehensive list of all of Eisler's works including reference to numerous filmscores.

Eisler emerged from the German avant-garde,he studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg. But he quickly devoted his creativity to the Left in Europe culminating in his grand collaborations with Bertold Brecht. Eisler lived a life of an activist,playing and conducting at worker rallies organizing concerts and choirs,giving lectures and accompanying from the piano. This collection reflects in a real way this, at times dangerous life. The Nazis had put a price on Eisler's head before his exile to Europe then finally Los Angeles with other emegres. His writing is purely functional, there are no glowing metaphors or scholarship with piles of footnote references. We live now in an age of analysis,something he missed. Eisler's words however reflect the actual experiences,the actual necessities of his art,and he knew intimately the history of music from its social and philosophic dimensions,in fact the first unpracticing social musicologist. He often here reports like "On the Concert for the International Brigade in Spain", referring to the times during the Spanish Civil War,(1936-1939) or "A Musical Journey through America". He often addressed the situation of the composer,his/her role within a world indeed casting darkness with each month."On the Situation in Modern Music" reflects this and points to committment,and the what he considered un-progressive forms of musical escapism,12-Tone music. This edition usefully gives the year at least of the writing or preparation. Eisler had the jargon of the Left consummately so you might read , "Hollywood, the film town, the dream of every petty bourgeois is a sort of suburb of Los Angeles". Eisler now away from the dangers, faced another one of his own creativity, he was very successful at writing for Hollywood filmscores.