Sound of Exile

Montevideo, Uruguay: Editorial Cooperativa Interamericana de Compositores, 1941. 330 by 240mm (13 by 9½ inches). Music score with illustrated wrapper; 8 pp. Part of a series: Instituto Interamericano de Musicología; publicación no. 3. Very Good with light creasing and two tiny tears to covers. Richard Engelbrecht (1907–2001) was a German composer and conductor. He was choirmaster of the Augsburg City Theater where he worked together with Paul Frankenburger.

EXILE: Engelbrecht left Germany because he was engaged to Ruth Herzfeld, who came from a Jewish family. He voluntarily left the Augsburg City Theater in 1931 because of anti-Semitic hostility. Engelbrecht and Herzfeld married in 1936 and as a result Engelbrecht no longer could work in Germany. They both emigrated to Argentina in 1937.

Engelbrecht established himself as conductor and choir director of Rosario, Argentina’s second largest city.
The piece is technically challenging and heavily atonal. The score is unusual because it is without time signature or measure markers. We call it the sound of exile.

At the time of cataloguing, no other copies for sale.
Bibliography: Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit; Glocer.