On March 10, 1948, world-renowned composer and pianist Ernst von Dohnányi (1877−1960) embarked for the United States, leaving Europe for good. Only a few years earlier, the seventy-year-old Hungarian had been a triumphant, internationally admired musician and leading figure in Hungarian musical life. Fleeing a political smear campaign that sought to implicate him in intellectual collaboration with fascism, he reached American shores without a job or a home. A Wayfaring Stranger presents the final period in Dohnányi’s exceptional career and uses a range of previously unavailable material to reexamine commonly held beliefs about the musician and his unique oeuvre. Offering insights into his life as a teacher, pianist, and composer, the book also considers the difficulties of émigré life, the political charges made against him, and the compositional and aesthetic dilemmas faced by a conservative artist. To this rich biographical account, Veronika Kusz adds an in-depth examination of Dohnányi’s late works—in most cases the first analyses to appear in musicological literature. This corrective history provides never-before-seen photographs of the musician’s life in the United States and skillfully illustrates Dohnányi’s impact on European and American music and the culture of the time.
A Wayfaring Stranger Ernst von Dohnányi's American Years, 1949-1960
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Reviews
“Based on little-known archival materials—some of which the author herself discovered—as well as detailed analyses, this book provides a much-needed reevaluation of the accepted narrative of Dohnányi’s biography.”—James A. Grymes, author of Ernst von Dohnányi: A Bio-Bibliography“The underlying scholarship of this book is first rate. A Wayfaring Stranger represents the best in the long tradition of Hungarian musicological studies.”—Klára Móricz, author of Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Music