Alma Mahler-Werfel: Letter to Eric Zeisl (19 September 1946)
Alma Mahler-Werfel: Letter to Eric Zeisl (19 September 1946)
It is so refreshing to find a composer in Hollywood who can still divorce himself from the false glitter of film music and devote his spare time to writing music to a religious text.
In the Catholic newspaper The Tidings, 13 April 1945
Alma Mahler-Werfel wrote from 610 N. Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. The friendship between her and Eric Zeisl stemmed from an encounter in Paris. Alma Mahler-Werfel had noticed Zeisl in a Parisian café and approached him. In Los Angeles, she contacted Zeisl to give him her thoughts on the Psalm composition which he had written upon receiving news of the murder of his father and stepmother in Treblinka, Requiem Ebraico, dedicated to the memory of the fathers, and of the countless victims of the Holocaust. Originally the work, commissioned by Jacob Sonderling and composed in 1944/45, was intended for the synagogue service. It is one of the first such pieces which deals with the Holocaust. The Requiem Ebraico went on to become Zeisl's most successful work.
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