Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9780520301832

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Reviews

Kusz's approach to the analysis of Dohnanyi's late works differs from that of previous studies in that it considers sources that were never before considered in this context. . . . This book is valuable to music scholars and to those interested in Hungarian topics in fields outside of music; and even in analysis chapters, where the work is most technical, Kusz provides context that is accessible and of interest to non-specialists. * Hungarian Cultural Studies * This book . . . provides a necessary reassessment of this remarkable composer and paints a portrait of a man who handled his painful situation with rare equanimity. * BBC Magazine * The presence of a major representative of the Central-European Romantic tradition in a small city in post-Second World War America is a tale worth telling. Veronika Kusz tells it well. * Music & Letters *

Author Information

Veronika Kusz is Senior Research Fellow and Curator of the Dohnányi Collection at the Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.

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