Wilhelm Grosz: A Song in Exile (for voice and piano)

Also available as Digital Device Download (not printable): GSP80768DGT

Wilhelm Grosz composed A Song in Exile — based on a text by Siegfried Trebitsch and translated by Hermon Ould — one month after his arrival in the United States and seven months prior to his own death at the age of forty-five. Grosz, along with countless fellow countrymen and women had to flee Vienna and their native country of Austria because of their non-Aryan classification as Jews by the Nazi Regime. A Song in Exile expresses the sense of loss, sadness and melancholy the composer must have felt as he attempted to rebuild his life and career. Despite the song ending with the optimistic words, “your road lies ever before you,” Grosz died of a heart attack in the same year as the work’s completion due to the humiliation and stress of transplantation.

Listen to a recording at ForbiddenMusic.org.

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.