(b Leipzig, 6 July 1898; d Berlin, 6 Sept 1962). German composer. Although he never completed an opera, he must be considered one of the most important composers for the theatre in the 20th century. He wrote music for 38 plays, including ten by Brecht. After four years of study with Schoenberg, he moved to Berlin in 1925 and became increasingly active in the workers’ movement, writing articles critical of the state of modern music and causing a distressing personal quarrel with Schoenberg.
In 1930 the lifelong friendship and collaboration between Eisler and Brecht began. Their major works together before Hitler became chancellor were the Lehrstücke Die Massnahme (1930) and Die Mutter (1931) and the film Kuhle Wampe (1931). During the first years of their exile from Germany, from 1933, their work together was sporadic, but the music written between 1934 and 1936 for Brecht’s rather unsatisfactory Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe is magnificent. After periods of work in Europe, the USSR and the USA, Eisler moved to New York in 1938 and then to Hollywood in 1942. In 1943 he began the extensive score for Brecht’s Schweyk im zweiten Weltkrieg, which received its première only in 1957, a year after Brecht’s death. In 1947 Eisler was called before the Committee on Un-American Activities and expelled from the USA.
from the Groves Dictionary