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Es Geht Wohl Anders (Things Turn Out Differently): The Unexpected Life of Walter Arlen

With Copland and Mills, 1965

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2. Tante Henshi c. 1920s The Dichter family at their home in Burgenland in the 1920s. Seated in the center is Leopold Dichter and to his right, his sister Hannah (Henshi), who moved to Chicago in the late 19th century. Tante Henshi, as Walter knew her, provided crucial assistance, including visas, to Walter and other family members that allowed them to escape Austria when the Nazis came to power. Image from the Dichter Collection, courtesy of Schüetz Design.
6. In Burgenland, 1929 Walter's family at their home in Burgenland in November, 1929. Standing left to right are Dr. Blick, Berthold Silberstein, Toddy Kolb, Michael Aptowitzer (Walter's father), and Rosl Dichter. Seated left to right are Mrs. Blick, Esther Dichter, Edith Aptowitzer, Shirley Wahl, Rose Wahl, Gretl Dichter, Isidor Dichter, and cousin Joyce Wahl. Walter sits on the ground in the front. Image from the Dichter Collection, courtesy of Schüetz Design.
8. Dichter Department Store c. 1910 The signage in this 1910 photo of the store indicates the items that the Dichters offered: "HAUS KUCHENGERATE," which means "cooking utensils," a message reinforced by the pots and pans prominently displayed. Other signs on the left side of the photo advertise rubber goods, toys and leather goods. The number "40" indicates the store's location at Brunnengasse 40. Image from the Dichter Collection, courtesy of Schüetz Design.
14. At the Beverly Hills Hotel, 1957
16. Outside the Dichter Department Store, 1928
19. With Consul General Thomas Klestil, c. 1970s Walter (far left) stands next to Austrian Consul General Thomas Klestil and members of a German theater group during their visit to Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Klestil, who opened Austria's consulate in Los Angeles in 1969, went on to serve as Austria's ambassador to the UN and was elected President of Austria in the 1990s. Also pictured are the German Consul General Constantin von Dziembowski (far right) and German cultural attaché Ingeborg Kurtz (center). Image from the Arlen (Dichter) Collection, courtesy of Schuetz Design.
20. At the home of Minna Coe, 1957 Walter (top left) and guests at a dinner party hosted by Minna Coe (seated, center) in honor of Heitor Villa Lobos (seated, center) during the filming of "Green Mansions" in 1957. Standing next to Walter are choral conductor Roger Wagner, Viennese conductor Ernst Kanitz, and John Vincent, chair of the UCLA Music Department. Seated on left is renowned film composer Milkos Rosza. Image from the Dichter Collection, courtesy of Schüetz Design.
24. Hiking in Sauerbrunn, 1935
29. With Eugene Ormandy c. 1970s Walter with famed conductor Eugene Ormandy and his wife Margaret at their home in Palm Springs. Ormandy was born to Jewish parents in Hungary and came to the United States in 1921. He began his tenure as the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1936 and served for in the post for over 44 years. Ormandy would often consult with Walter about his work during visits to his family's vacation home in Palm Springs, as pictured here c. 1970s. Image from the Arlen (Dichter) Collection, courtesy of Schuetz Design.
30. Hannah and Wolf Aptowitzer
35. With Copland and Mills, 1965

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Student and Critic There could hardly be two more contrasting cities than Vienna and Los Angeles. The former lives from the past, the latter dependent on the trends of tomorrow. Yet it was precisely this synthesis that brought so many central European refugees to Southern California. The movie industry realized that its tales of adventure and love demanded the music of German late Romanticism, while the even climate of the region was the opposite of Vienna’s extreme fluctuations between freezing winters and stifling summers. The perpetual sunshine, spring climate and year-round jasmine were of course not to everyone’s liking. The Composer Eric Zeisl described it as a ‘sunny, blue grave’. Others, who initially felt safe geographically so far from Europe, would realize that the distance between themselves and former homelands was not solely measured in miles or kilometers.

The ways of America, and more specifically, the ways of Los Angeles were unlike anything they had known before. The American language itself tore down barriers constructed by German that allowed a permanent distance between oneself and those who were not family members or intimate friends. Professors who were offered teaching positions in local universities were shocked at the easy exchanges that existed between students and faculty–indeed, they were shocked how in an environment shaped by individual choice, classes weren’t held with the wise and venerated master in front of silent, unquestioning youngsters. Arnold Schoenberg and Ernst Krenek soon learned that the opposite face of Californian informality was openness to new thinking and ideas. Crusty Europeans soon accepted that questions from pupils were not an outward manifestation of stupidity refusing to yield to the brilliance of their lectures, but a legitimate challenge to claims of intellectual authority.

Walter Arlen, at the age of thirty, was neither a crusty European, nor stupid. He quickly learned English and spoke without a trace of accent. His attractive, yet studious appearance betrayed little that was not clean-cut American. Like so many émigrés fleeing the barbarity of Nazism, he appeared to have reinvented himself by putting as much distance between himself and his past as possible. As a youngster, he had it easier than those a generation older, holding on to the traditions of a continent that had so brazenly disowned them. He no longer needed to feel shame at being a Jew and one of his first student works upon arriving at UCLA was a setting of the Song of Songs.

His studies in UCLA meant that he could live in Santa Monica with his Aunt Esther, her husband, and his father. One of his teachers was the music critic for the Los Angeles Times, Albert Goldberg, who invited the young Arlen to go and cover for him at a concert of contemporary music. Arlen objected and reminded Goldberg that English was not a language in which he had experience writing. “You will” said Goldberg, and from that moment Arlen’s journalism became a permanent fixture of Los Angeles’s contemporary music coverage. With Arnold Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, Ernst Toch, and Igor Stravinsky all based in the same city, Arlen’s position would become more important than he could ever have imagined.

Yet it was hardly the jump into the deep-end that it may initially appear. While working with Roy Harris, he had met and gotten to know some of the world’s most important musicians, composers, and administrators. By the time he began studying with Goldberg, he was already better connected than most of his classmates, and with a musical background from Vienna–no matter how tenuous–his sophistication stood out.

Once established as critic, Arlen took the ethical decision to cease composing. How could he possibly operate as a critic for contemporary music if he had established a profile for himself as a composer? There is a Yiddish saying, ‘You can’t dance at two weddings with one behind,' and Walter chose to remain a journalist and later, pedagogue. In addition, he was profoundly aware that his musical language was out of step with the trends of the day. Even if his own music bypassed the strict dodecaphonic or aleatoric fashions of the mid-20^th century, it was his responsibility to provide intelligent commentary on the works of others. It was a profession he took seriously. He regularly covered new music introduced at Peter Yates' "Evenings on the Roof," and as the series transitioned to become Lawrence Morton’s "Monday Evening Concerts" and later relocated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Like Eric Zeisl, Arlen was able to move seamlessly between the opposing new-music camps of Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.

His account of attending the funeral of Schoenberg’s wife was a chilling reminder of how close and hateful anti-Semitism remained. He had been one of only a few to attend the funeral of Arnold Schoenberg who was buried as a Jew. Schoenberg had reconverted to Judaism in Paris in 1933, though his wife and family remained Catholic. At the funeral of Schoenberg’s wife Gertrude, the priest made comments that Arlen and members of the Schoenberg family felt offensive to any Jew, and nearly criminal given the atrocities from which they had all escaped, and from which Catholic conversion would have offered no rescue. It brought to mind a song Arlen wrote as a teenager for his cousin Micky - and Micky's eventual suicide - a silent departure from life that was tragically common among émigrés as well as other Holocaust survivors. He called the lullaby "Es Geht Wohl Anders (Things Turn out Differently)," perhaps a subconscious premonition of his own struggles to come.