Biographical Essay (Barbara Zeisl)
On May 18, 2005 my father, composer Eric(h) Zeisl, born in Vienna on May 18, 1905, would have celebrated his 100 th birthday. He was, however, only granted a little more than half such life span: Zeisl died February 18, 1959, at 53 years of age. Although he was uprooted from his beloved Austria when he was 33, Zeisl never stopped loving his native land, a love affair, which remained thwarted and unrequited for as long as he lived.
Looking back, I remember that whenever we took an "Ausflug," which we did almost every Sunday, and I would rave about a field of green clover or the prospect of climbing up a rather brown-baked hill, my father would correct my lens, and say, "Aber Barbara, das sind ja keine Wiesen. Das ist ja kein Berg. Die gibt es nur in Oes terreich"! (But Barbara, those aren't real meadows, that's not a mountain. You can only find those in Austria."!
How this Ur-Wiener must have suffered to have been so uprooted, in the fullest sense of the word, to have fled to and end his life in an ever-warm, desert climate! How especially difficult for someone who had adverse, allergic reactions to the sun, who needed to wear long-sleeved shirts and very large hats for protection, and who, even in cold-climate Vienna, was rarely seen without his hat or even a parasol!
My father's adopted, external world essentially remained foreign to him, for, as he wrote for "The Transplanted Composer" in 1950, when asked by L.A Times music critic Albert Goldberg, if his music had changed since he had come to America, "I was a finished product of the old world, I could not change that even if I wanted toÉ." But Zeisl's inner life, his music, sustained him and helped him to overcome the deep sadness at being cut off, or as Alma Mahler Werfel wrote us upon his death: "I felt his great talent but also his deep disappointment about his life, which did not bring him the success due to his significance."
My father came of age in "the old world," in Vienna, in a family which, though musical, frowned on the choice of music as a profession, and refused to support his studies. But Zeisl, obsessed with making music, persisted and was allowed to enter the Academy at age 14. Published at 16, these early years were a prolific time of Lied composition, all so intrinsically tied up with his emotional life in Vienna, with the Austrian landscape he so loved, and with meeting my mother, in particular, whom he married at age 30, in 1935, just three years before the Anschluss. It is not surprising, and perhaps even significant, that, with the traumatic caesura of having to leave his native soil, my father never wrote another Lied.
Fortunately, my parents managed to escape to Paris, where they lived for a year, before sailing to America. Zeisl was allowed to sojourn in Paris for an extended stay, due to the efforts of his new friend, who visited us often later in Los Angeles, with his thick ,slick, jet-black hair and pale face, Darius Milhaud.
I was born within a few months of my parents' arrival in New York, in May, 1940, the day before my father's 35 th birthday. From newspaper clippings of the time, it is obvious that my father seemed to have garnered some success as a composer, with works performed over the radio during this early period of transition. And what a transition it must have been: instead of living in Vienna's Moelkerbastei, opposite the Beethoven house, and rather than a little bird singing outside the window, as in "Vor meinem Fenster," they embraced their child while living in relative squalor in a New York tenement house with no heat, with no greenery, and windows which faced the endless rooftops.
While in New York, my father befriended composer Hanns Eisler, who was instrumental in obtaining a movie contract at MGM for Zeisl, and thus in 1942, we moved to Hollywood and the time of my first actual memories of my father and his composing at the piano, and our wonderful relationship which, sadly, lasted only 18 years! It is in those early years, that I recall the ritual of sitting on the potty, while my father stood in his nightshirt before the sink and shaved, most probably around the time that Alexander Tansman, with whose daughters I played very often, wrote a brief musical homage to him, "Ë la Memoire d'une Moustache," when my father decided to shave off his moustache, perhaps because I had complained that it tickled too much.
I also recall taking brief walks around the neighborhood with my father, climbing onto the surrounding palm trees, which he could never grow to love. I was a tomboy who loved jumping up or climbing onto higher spaces, and my father would then help me down to the ground, in most cases gently and lovingly. However, I do remember one incident where my climbing was not met with great enthusiasm, quite the contrary, where I was sorely reprimanded for the attempt. My father's composition was to be performed on the same program with a work by Stravinsky, whom my father greatly admired. I was taken along to the rehearsal, and seeing Stravinsky sitting on a high chest, with his feet dangling down, garbed in tights and ballet shoes, a strange sight to me, I was fascinated and jumped up to sit next to him, swinging my feet next to his. I remember my father forcibly and suddenly yanking me off the chest and asking me reproachfully, "Don't you know whom you are bothering by jumping up next to him?" "Wasn't it obvious," I remember thinking, and said, rather defiantly, "Of course, it's Mr. Stravinsky"! My father continued to reprimand me and remained stern for what I recall now was most probably the only time in my life he was ever severe with me, but Stravinsky then took matters in hand and lifted the pressure off me by pulling me back up, insisting that it was quite alright to dangle my feet next to his.
In those years of my first decade, my father was a "stay-at-home" Dad, composing sections of films, such as Lassie come home, Journey for Margaret, Slightly Dangerous, Above Suspicion, Bataan, Song of Russia, Cross of Lorraine, They Were Expendable, and Without Love, while my mother ran the household, drove him to the studio and to appointments and later made a living by being a teacher, which was often overwhelming for her, and so, repeatedly, her health would break down. Thus the song, Mother is sick in the Pieces for Barbara, which should more appropriately be called Pieces aboutBarbara, with titles such as Sommersaults, Walking with Daddy, etc.
I also recall my "musical education" with my father, which wasn't a formal one - that is, he never taught me how to play an instrument - but an introduction to musical literature, which I took completely for granted, and which today leaves me in awe: not only did he play back on the piano any song I learned at school or liked, but it was always with an orchestra-like accompaniment. Often, when I liked a particular popular song, he would be quick to play the classical model, from which he then proved it had been stolen! More importantly, I was privileged to hear entire overtures and sections of operas or concert works played by him on the piano first, and later heard over the radio, when he would sit, score in hand, and listen to various performances, mostly hosted by the Gas Company, over the air. My father always joked that, because my mother was perennially late, he no longer was able to hear an overture, and so Zeisl would play through these at home, a private performance just for me, but really for himself, while my mother was getting ready. I owe my love of opera to those times of intimate, guided musical tours through the Wagnerian, Straussian and Verdian repertoire.
Later, when I began my teens, I was embarrassed about this focus on classical music, on the Europeanness of my parents, for my young adolescent pals were into pop music, and not at all fond of "real music," as my father referred to it. So imagine how it must have hurt my father, when, instead of being thrilled, I was embarrassed about my birthday party, my 12 th. After a home-made goulash dinner, which most of the boys slung across the porch at each other, - while seated at the very same long table where the Korngolds and Tochs, the Tansmans and the Soulima Stravinskys, the Piattigorskys ,the Kafkas and Toldis, writers Feuchtwanger, Gina Kaus, Hans Kafka, and, when they visited the U.S., Hilde Spiel and Peter de Mendelssohn, friends Reitlers and Altmanns, actors Felix Bressart, Paul and Lisl Henreid and agent Ingo and Kaethe Preminger would gather together to laugh and enjoy conversation, and extol the delicious food - we drove in various cars to Los Angeles City College to attend a performance of my father's comic opera, Leonce and Lena. I remember pleading with my friends to behave or I would "get it" afterwards.
How different were the culture of my parents and the atmosphere of my home compared to those of the children in my school! I was keenly sensitive to the enormous differences in a variety of ways, not only because of the language factor, or because of our old, musty and sagging, Biedermeier furniture, but because my father was a composer, a word and a profession which none of them understood.
Most telling in this regard was a reaction of mine, which I remember thinking about intensely, on one of our Sunday outings in my early years. There were mules and horses grazing together in a nearby field and my father tried to explain the difference between a mule and a horse to me: a baby horse came from a mother and father horse, whereas a mule was a product of a donkey and a horse, and could never have "babies." I remember thinking about this for quite some time, puzzled and distressed. And then, after processing the information, I asked worriedly: "So does that mean, that when a European marries an American, they cannot have babies?" The idea of the possibility that two such different cultures were so foreign to each other as to be mutually exclusive, and could lead to a dead-end street, obviously bothered me, and, while growing up, frequently made me uncomfortable and unappreciative of the great gift that had been given me.
I know now, that this was an infantile reaction to feeling different, and today I wish more than anything, that my father would know how grateful I am for all that I received from him and my mother. In that L.A. Times article of 1950, Zeisl bade America publicly to accept his music as a gift. I was surrounded by his great gift privately, on a daily basis, my very own, Austro-American legacy.