A Wayfaring Stranger: Ernst von Dohnányi's American Years, 1949-1960 (California Studies in 20th-Century Music #25)

By: Veronika Kusz

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Synopsis: 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.