Walter Arlen: Altes Lied und Humoreske - Digital (Not Printable)

for piano

Composer note
Altes Lied (Old Song) was composed in Vienna. Humoreske was begun in Vienna, but completed in America, due to the ‘Anschluss’. Both works are dedicated to the memory of my mother, who was pleased with my interest in music but never took my composing seriously.

An occurrence, significant in my musical development, is connected with the family estate in Sauerbrunn, a spa resort east of Vienna in former Western Hungary. When my mother, my sister Edith and I arrived at our Villa in 1937, to begin our annual summer vacation, I found, in the kitchen space of our ‘apartment’, a fine upright piano, freshly tuned. I did not ask where it came from. It had to have come from some distant town. There were no telephones yet in small Austrian towns. I never asked questions and never thanked my mother for having done this for me. I have regretted that ever since.

I aimlessly but eagerly improvised, and I composed my two earliest songs. The first was Du bist der Garten, on a poem by Anton Wildgans (this became Altes Lied for piano solo). The second was Wiegenlied on a poem by Paul Heyse. This was a lullaby for my newborn cousin Michael (Micky) Rattner, who later shot himself in exile.

I analyzed and annotated, in daily increments, the entire piano reduction of Wagner’s Meistersinger that last summer in Sauerbrunn.

— Walter Arlen

Movements
I. Altes Lied
II. Humoreske

About the Exilarte Edition
G. Schirmer/Wise Music’s Exilarte Edition exclusively publishes works by composers who were persecuted, forced into exile, or murdered by the Nazi regime. All original manuscripts of these works are archived in the Exilarte Center at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in Austria.