A Wayfaring Stranger

Ernst von Dohnányi's American Years, 1949-1960

Veronika Kusz

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780520301832
• eBook ISBN: 9780520972261
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

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.

Table of contents

• Imprint
• Subvention
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Music Examples
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. From the “Ramparts” of Hungarian Music to Emigration: Dohnányi’s Career
• 2. Life as an Émigré: The American Period
• 3. Representative Works: Stabat Mater and American Rhapsody
• 4. Independent Compositions: Works for Piano and Flute
• 5. Two Concertos, Two Stories
• Epilogue: Spontaneity, Flexibility, Adaptation
• Appendix 1. Timeline of Dohnányi’s Life in the United States
• Appendix 2. Main Specifications of Dohnányi’s American Works
• Appendix 3. Dohnányi’s Concerts in the United States
• Appendix 4. Dohnányi’s Concert Repertoire in the United States
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index