Hanns Eisler's Art Songs: Arguing with Beauty

Traces Eisler's art songs through the political crises of the twentieth century, presenting them as a way to intervene in the nationalist appropriation of aesthetic material.



Best known for his collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, composer Hanns Eisler also set nineteenth-century German poetry to music that both absorbs and disturbs the Lieder tradition. This book traces Eisler's art songs (German: Kunstlieder) through twentieth-century political crises from World War I to Nazi-era exile and ...