Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface: The Black Thread
- Part One
- Part Two
- Part Three
- Part Four
- 14 The Jewish Community Center
- 15 International Composers
- 16 Making Music after War
- 17 A Cold War in the Sun
- 18 Spotlighting Composers
- 19 Back to Europe
- 20 Going Places
- Part Five
- Conclusion: “I Was There”
- Notes
- Index
18 - Spotlighting Composers
from Part Four
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2019
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface: The Black Thread
- Part One
- Part Two
- Part Three
- Part Four
- 14 The Jewish Community Center
- 15 International Composers
- 16 Making Music after War
- 17 A Cold War in the Sun
- 18 Spotlighting Composers
- 19 Back to Europe
- 20 Going Places
- Part Five
- Conclusion: “I Was There”
- Notes
- Index
Summary
“Within a few minutes, when Léo Arnaud and Andre Previn will raise their batons, so that this hall may be filled with the sound of symphonic music, something most beautiful will happen…. We shall have symphonic music in our own concert hall.” The Westside Jewish Community Center auditorium, officially the Henry Weinberger Auditorium, opened on May 1, 1954, with a symphony concert. The event was led by André Previn and his friend Léo Arnaud, a French American composer who worked as an orchestrator with Previn at MGM. Landau herself introduced the concert, drawing attention to the significance of the new stage. With that stage the Westside Center became Landau's hub—her on-site office always busy and full of life.
But Landau also continued work outside the centers. With contacts in the American Musicological Society as well as other local academic institutions, Landau would field various external offers during her years in Los Angeles. She entertained all requests, remaining open to new possibilities and making room for them alongside her workload at the centers. She had had years of practice doing so, accommodating any musical options on hand. But one assignment, which coincided with the very start of her Westside transfer, would prove impossible—one of the few Landau essentially abandoned. In an interesting twist, it was also one she had wanted a decade earlier—with roots in her early professional life in Berlin.
Once in the United States, Landau had thought the country could benefit from the indexing work she had done in Germany. In 1953 Donald Grout, professor of musicology at Cornell University, came to the same conclusion. That January 12, in a letter, he reported to Landau that the executive board of the American Musicological Society had discussed having her complete an index representing “both musicological and non-musical periodicals published in the country.” On February 15, 1953, Frederick W. Sternfeld, music professor at Dartmouth College, wrote officially asking her to prepare such a catalog for the respected Journal of the American Musicological Society. He knew of her important work for Einstein's Zeitschrift and hoped she could produce similar results for the society.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Anneliese Landau's Life in MusicNazi Germany to Émigré California, pp. 131 - 139Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019